War Games
by Nancy Brown
Summary: Jack takes the team on a cross-training exercise with UNIT.  This goes as well as one would expect.  Part of my fake third season.
1. Chapter 1

Title: War Games (1/4)  
>Author: <strong>nancybrown<strong>  
>Artist: <strong>madbottoms<strong>  
>Characters: Jack, Ianto, Gwen, Martha, Lois, Francine, Johnson, Patanjali, OCs<br>Pairings: Jack/Ianto, Gwen/Rhys, Martha/Tom  
>Warnings: violence, spoilers up through COE (characters only), character death (mostly Jack)<br>Betas: **sariagray** and **bookwormsarah** did tremendous work getting this to coherency, and I thank them. All remaining errors are mine alone.  
>Notes: Set in a fake third season in which Lois Habiba, Agent Johnson, and Rupesh Patanjali have joined Torchwood. No familiarity with other stories in this series is necessary. Written for <strong>tw_bigbang<strong>.

Art for this fic can be found at madbottoms DOT livejournal DOT com SLASH 53381 DOT html and SLASH 53563 DOT html

* * *

><p>Chapter One<p>

* * *

><p>The day had started around three in the morning. Even Jack had been asleep, waking Ianto from time to time with half-grunted snores which he swore he never made. The Rift alarm dragged them from bed and into yesterday's clothes. Ianto drove while Jack roused the team from their own beds (or at least from someone's beds - this <em>was<em>Torchwood). All but Lois met at the location of the most recent sighting at Church and King streets. The gelatinous monstrosity had left a slime trail Ianto could tell would be a pain in the arse to scrub later.

They trapped the alien from three sides up against an estate agent's window along Cardiff Road. There was no traffic at this time of the day, thank goodness. No-one but the team and the very few intoxicated late-nighters who'd been the ones to call the police saw the creature crash through the front glass window of Thomas & Rose. The bright blue sign above the door was briefly eclipsed by goo as Johnson, tired of waiting for the order, shot the Jelly Monster. By the time they'd finished cleanup operations, Jack declared an early breakfast for the team. Ianto phoned Lois with their orders and warned her that there would be a large dry cleaning run today.

All of which was why, at ten past four in the afternoon, Ianto was back at the flat, cursing himself for not having finished the packing list he'd intended to write last night. They would only be gone for three days, socks and pants were accounted for, but the small luxuries of shampoo, razors, and the obscure hair products Jack liked to clutter the bathroom counter with were still waiting to be packed. Had Ianto written the damned list, instead of getting distracted by the way Jack gnawed absently at a hangnail, finger sliding in and out of his mouth, just enough light in the room to glisten and show how wet that lucky finger was ...

Ianto shook his head. Distracted.

They had one suitcase between them, and a garment bag. Rhiannon had taken to pressing him at every opportunity about "where his relationship with Jack was." (Johnny, in a rare bout of male commiseration with his brother-in-law, chalked it up to her watching relationship advice programmes.) This was a nice change from her pressing him about why he sported so many unusual bruises, with her eyes taking in Jack's unblemished face beside him, but the overall embarrassment factor hadn't wavered.

Where was his relationship with Jack? One flat, with Jack's name joining his on the lease when it came time to renew. One car, with Jack's in storage. One suitcase, with their socks and underwear neatly stowed until it came time for Jack to open it tomorrow morning and scatter their things everywhere. One garment bag, because wrinkled clothing made a bad impression, and God forbid they not impress the twits at UNIT. One small carrier bag, which Ianto knew was missing one if not several items he would kick himself for leaving.

_"Ianto, pet,"_ came Gwen's voice in his ear. _"Are you going to be back soon?"_

"I'm walking out the door now." He took one more look in the bathroom and snatched both cans of deodorant. There were limits to how good even Jack smelled when he'd been exerting himself.

Nothing was left on that oughtn't be. The one lonely plant they kept (a cutting taken from the forested spot where the Botanists had visited - "for luck," Jack had said) was watered. If he had left something, they would have to make do. It was a military base, not the middle of the ocean.

"On my way."

When he returned to the Hub, it was nearly five, their scheduled time of departure. He loaded the bags directly from his car into the SUV. Everything together would be a tight fit, and Ianto considered talking Jack into taking a second vehicle. As he made his way in from the garage, he heard his colleagues working on a similar attempt.

"Honestly, sir," Lois said in her reasonable voice, the 'nursery school teacher dealing with a sweet but intransigent toddler' voice, "I should stay here. Gwen is far more suited to a field mission than I am."

Rupesh put his own foot in. "I ought to stay as well. I've got that backlog to work on, plus the alien from last night."

Jack's arms were folded. "You're both going. Gwen is staying. If the Rift spits out anything while we're gone, she's better equipped to deal with it than either of you. I'm seriously considering bringing Gwen along anyway. We should have the whole team."

"Leave me out of this." Gwen sat at her workstation glancing at police reports. "I'm getting a working holiday away from all of you. I'll bring Rhys down here to help me redecorate while you're gone."

"We could use more chrome," Ianto said, joining the conversation. "Give the place a modern look. The whole ironworks and abandoned train platform motif is a bit dated."

"Hey," Jack said, rounding on him. "I _like_the ironworks and abandoned platform motif. I helped put it together. It's very homey."

Johnson said, "Only if you're one of those abysmal steampunk people. Are we ready?" Perry's face took on a familiar expression of incomprehension at the word 'steampunk.' Ianto made a mental note to find him a book. Perry would enjoy the subject, and Ianto liked opportunities to be nice to him, especially as Jack tended towards the brusque when dealing with their new tech.

Jack turned back to Gwen, gesturing Lois and Rupesh vaguely towards the garage. "You know the rules. No parties, no loud music, no handing the planet over to anyone with tentacles, scales, or extra heads."

Ianto said, "The feeding schedule is in the kitchen. Janet's been off her food this week, so don't worry if she rejects it. I'll get to the mess when we're back."

Gwen stood to peck them both on the cheek. "Go on. Call me when you get there so I know you didn't shoot anyone in the car, and give Martha my love."

"But ... " Lois tried once more.

"The last one in the car has to ride on my lap." That got her out the door without another peep.

Poor Lois. Her field experience was practically non-existent, and Ianto knew he hadn't helped matters when he'd told her about his own first mission away from the base. Still, forewarned was forearmed, and UNIT soldiers were unlikely to want Torchwood for elevenses. Well, not until after the training was completed.

Probably.

He ought to tell her to try not to look delicious.

* * *

><p>After two long hours filled with Jack's attempts at jolly car games, they arrived at the base. January had come with snow, and the view outside the window as they'd driven had been unspeakably sad in the way that winter could be, glazing fields and trees in grubby white. The SUV was warm, packed with people, but as they opened the doors, frosty air nipped inside, freezing them as they disembarked.<p>

Lois hated winter.

"I'll help you with the bags." Ianto's smile was pleasant but tight. He didn't want to be here, either.

"Thanks."

A soldier, good-looking but bland, led them to the building where they'd be bunking for the next few nights. Technically, it was Lois's task as general support to unload the car and see that everyone's belongings made it to the correct rooms, but she appreciated the assistance. Ianto hefted the enormous bag Rupesh had packed into the room he would be sharing with Perry. Something clanked when the bag hit the floor, and they both winced.

"He does know he has to sign out when removing technology from the Hub," Ianto said. Lois was more concerned about _what_their doctor had brought. She had informed him and Agent Johnson about her new orders, but Rupesh was more reckless than she liked. Johnson was patient, and would wait for Lois to give the word. Rupesh might decide to carry the orders out on his own volition.

Had she managed to convince Captain Harkness to allow her to stay alone, she could have easily turned over the systems to her true supervisor, and arranged for Jack, Gwen and Ianto to be taken into custody upon their return from UNIT. The coup would have been simple and bloodless. Mr Gloucester had given her carte blanche in destroying the team; Lois preferred detaining them until they could come to a proper trial for their crimes. She had to ready the three of them for capture at once, she knew, but not at the Hub, not when they had access to their weapons.

She brought Perry's small suitcase into the room while Ianto took his and Jack's bags into their quarters across the corridor. Sneaking a glance, she swallowed her smile when she noticed their room held the same two narrow beds the others did. UNIT guest quarters weren't designed to be cosy. Ianto hauled the last two equipment bags into his room, and then applied Torchwood's own lock to the outside of the door, a device with over a billion possible combinations. So much for not taking technology.

Their guide led them to the mess, where Perry, Johnson and Rupesh already stood in line with trays. Lois took her tray, then almost put it back again when she saw the food. Ianto didn't make a face but the tight smile had returned. They joined the others at a row of uncomfortable chairs against a metal table. Johnson and Perry were digging in with determination.

"I think I'm a vegetarian again," said Rupesh, gaping at his plate in disgust.

Ianto wore a matching expression. "I may join you."

Lois was aware of the observation by the others in the mess. Some stares were friendly, others bored, but she didn't need any psychic training to pick up on the underlying hostility. The five of them stood out in their civilian clothes. UNIT and Torchwood weren't sibling agencies, although their work overlapped, nor were they kissing cousins, no matter what Jack said. If they were like family, it was the distant sort of relation where multiple generations hadn't spoken because of what Cousin Vicky said about Our Doctor, never mind when Uncle Alastair failed to lift a finger whilst Auntie Yvonne was knocking holes in the walls and letting the vermin inside.

Ianto said, "I don't suppose the local pizzeria will deliver this far out?"

"I'll take the car," Rupesh said. "Surely one can't be more than twenty or thirty miles away."

"It's not that bad," Johnson said, before taking a large bite of something brownish and gooey. Lois stared at it on her fork.

Perry sat across from her, watching her eyes. "It's easiest if you don't chew. Wash each bite down with your drink." He demonstrated. "Go on."

Ianto and Rupesh observed her closely, letting Lois be the guinea pig. She took a small piece, swallowed, and sputtered down a gulp of water after. "Oh, that's _awful_." She drank more. It was terrible, but not, when the taste faded, as terrible as it could have been. Johnson chewed her own food slowly.

"Ah, suppertime!" Jack's voice boomed easily through the mess hall, drawing attention away from the team and squarely onto himself. At his side, Lois saw Dr Jones roll her eyes affectionately.

As they readied their trays, Lois managed a few more bites of the horrible food, feeling more than just the bad meat curdling in her stomach. She had known what her task was the day she accepted the assignment to infiltrate Torchwood. She'd forged her relationships with the other members of the team with a mind towards reporting on their activities and determining if Torchwood posed a threat to the people of Great Britain. Martha Jones had come to work for Torchwood briefly during Lois's tenure, and Lois had come to like her. Unfortunately, Martha and her husband and sister had embroiled themselves in an illegal plot last month. Now the three of them were on the same targeted list for arrest and prosecution.

Martha sat next to her, tray empty except for a banana. Fruit hadn't been available when Lois had gone through the line minutes before. Jack sat across from Martha, his own plate holding an extra helping of brown glop, which he scooped onto his fork and chewed noisily. "Just like Mother used to make."

"It's good to see you," Martha said, nodding around the table. She unpeeled her banana and, without even glancing at Jack's suddenly interested expression, broke it into bite-sized pieces before she popped a bit into her mouth.

"How are you feeling?" Lois asked. Gwen would already have Martha deep in a conversation about every aspect of her pregnancy, but Gwen wasn't here.

"Enormous. Nothing fits anymore, and it's only going to get worse."

Jack said around a bite of his food, "Well, you look gorgeous."

"You'd say that if I was blue with tentacles." They shared a laugh, which echoed down the table.

"You would look fantastic with tentacles," Jack said.

Rupesh said, "You're not eating?"

"I ate before you arrived. My blood glucose levels mean I have to eat every two hours. I'm going to be the size of a house by June." Her tone was joking, but she'd dropped eye contact.

"We're being tested," Jack said around his glass. His voice was low, carrying only to their group. "The real food was an hour ago. This is dog food." He took another bite.

Lois set down her fork. Ianto said, "Jack?"

"I've eaten worse. It won't kill you."

Martha gave a short nod, confirming his words. It wasn't poisonous, just intentionally nasty. Also, she wasn't eating it.

Rupesh took one more look at his plate, then pushed it away. Ianto took an unhappy bite, following Jack's lead. Before she could decide, Lois heard a noise, and turned to see Johnson scraping the last of the sauce from her plate.

"I'm getting seconds," she announced, loud enough for the neighbouring tables to hear, and went back for more as the rest stared.

* * *

><p>Just the smell from the dog food had sent Martha's stomach into nausea territory. She hadn't found out about the prank in time to warn anyone except Jack, and she didn't dare to show solidarity with the Torchwood team by eating the terrible stuff. The banana helped with her queasiness, as did small sips of water. At least she had her own quarters, and she planned on resting as soon as tonight's meeting was finished.<p>

As they got up from the table, most of the team still hungry, Martha murmured to Jack, "So did you _know_Johnson's are bigger than yours?"

"I wouldn't say 'bigger'." Jack mock-frowned back before drawing a friendly arm around her.

The UNIT team selected for the training mission had already gathered in the briefing room and stood at attention. Another slight: implying Torchwood was slow and behind schedule. Martha was in a bad position between the two agencies. She worked for UNIT, and thus her first loyalty had to be to them. Jack was like family, though, and she'd worked enough for Torchwood to feel like a member of the team. Never mind that any snippy comments about "those idiots in Cardiff" tended to be spoken while looking her way and daring objections.

Jack ignored it all, acting as grimly pleased as if presented with second-hand toys. He strode to the front of the room and stuck out his hand. "Captain Jack Harkness. You must be Colonel Fielding."

The Colonel took the proffered hand after a moment's pause. "Captain. I apologise for not having met you when you arrived. Has your team settled in?"

"We have, thank you. I was happy to see UNIT's hospitality hasn't diminished since our last cooperative visit. That was top of the line Pedigree. Our pet dinosaur loves the stuff."

A quick mutter went through the room, almost too quiet to hear. Myfanwy was in Martha's reports, which didn't mean anyone had read them. The Colonel's face twitched.

"Why don't you introduce your team to the men?"

"Why don't I?" Jack turned to where his team waited, where only Perry and Johnson stood at something close to attention. "Ianto Jones and Kathryn Johnson, field agents. Our medic, Dr Rupesh Patanjali." Rupesh attempted a friendly smile and failed. "Perry Fletcher, our tech expert. Lois Habiba, general support." Lois was wide-eyed, and Martha felt a stab of pity. She was an admin, and ought to be back at the Hub, not traipsing around UNIT playing war games.

The Colonel led Jack to the front of the line-up for UNIT's group. "The men and women we picked for this training are at the tops of their respective fields." He didn't introduce anyone, but Jack nodded as he passed. "Our weapons experts each have a perfect or near-perfect record in marksmanship, and all our technicians have received advanced training in cutting-edge technologies, both human and extraterrestrial. UNIT's exobiologists study every lifeform Earth has encountered."

The Colonel gave a deliberate glance back to the Torchwood team. "The personnel files you submitted didn't include your team's qualifications. What degrees does your technologist have?"

Jack's expression never wavered. "Perry's more a hands-on kinda guy."

"Yes. Perhaps his 'hands-on' approach could be demonstrated for our team?"

"Later." Jack had said Perry's background was none of UNIT's business, and Martha had chosen to honour that decision.

"I notice Agent Cooper, whom your records indicate was trained with the local police force, is not in attendance."

"Someone has to mind the store. You can't bring everyone." Still the same smile.

"No, but you did bring two secretaries. I'm sure there's a reason." Colonel Fielding did not use the exact same inflections he would have had he said the word 'prostitutes' instead, but it was close.

"Yes." Jack refused to elaborate. The Colonel tried and failed to hide his annoyance at the lack of response. This round went to Jack, who turned back to the soldiers and continued the inspection as if there had been no interruption. "Good. Good. Soldier, what're your qualifications?"

The young lieutenant he'd paused in front of saluted. Hollins, Martha thought. In a firm voice, she said, "Sir. Certified expert on all known human, Sontaran, and Sycorax projectile weapons."

"Ever encounter a Lidellian phase blaster?

"Not yet, sir."

"Avoid them. They jam." He moved on, nodding appreciatively at the better-looking soldiers. Martha had made a point to give Torchwood a copy of UNIT's harassment policies in advance. Ianto had sent her flowers two days later.

Jack stopped in front of a sergeant. His smile dropped. "No."

"Excuse me?" said the Colonel.

"Not this guy. Sergeant Trent, is it?" Jack made an exaggerated look at the nametag, but something about the way he pronounced the name suggested he already knew. "He's off the team."

Colonel Fielding asked, "Is there a reason?"

"Yes."

"Sir," said Trent. "I'll stand down."

"Not unless the Captain gives me a reason why."

Jack's eyes never left Trent's face. "He knows why. The sergeant goes, or we're done."

"We've been planning this for months, Captain."

"I don't care, Colonel."

"Do we get to disallow some of your team?"

Jack turned away on one heel. "Kids, we're going home. Lois, get the bags. Ianto, make sure the car is ready to go and that they didn't steal our sparkplugs. Johnson, if anyone tries to stop us from leaving, shoot them." He was already to the door. Lois hesitated, but Ianto was a step behind Jack, and the rest followed, with Johnson taking up the rear position.

Martha stayed put, fighting the urge to laugh at the pop-eyed horror on Colonel Fielding's face. "Harkness, get back here."

"Rupesh, we're current on our shots, but everyone will want a booster after this." Jack touched his earpiece. "Gwen, we're headed back. Make sure you've cleared the beer out of the swimming pool."

The laugh was winning.

"Captain Harkness!"

Jack paused. "Colonel?"

"The sergeant will be taken off the team."

"Thank you." He watched until Trent had saluted the Colonel and left the room. "Shall we continue?"

The Colonel growled his way through the rest of the inspection, and then everyone took their seats, Torchwood in one corner of the room, the UNIT personnel distinctly in another, Martha as ever in the middle.

"So," Jack said. "War games. It sounds like fun, right? We all go out into the field and pretend to shoot aliens, and call it training." He offered a friendly grin, which none of the UNIT soldiers returned. "It's not. As anyone who's been up against an alien menace and survived it can tell you, the real situations you'll run into have nothing to do with anything you can practise for. How many of you were present for the Sontaran incident last year?"

Four hands went up. One of them was Martha's.

"How many of you lost someone you knew?" Several more hands went into the air.

"We were locked inside our own base as soon as the ATMOS fumes started rolling out. By the time we got the doors open, the sky was on fire. Sometimes, you can't plan ahead."

Jack took a seat, sitting with a wide, easy stance in a chair not designed for lounging. The Colonel went to the front. "Our day begins at 0800 hours tomorrow. We'll be conducting several cross-training exercises and one large exercise. You will be assigned to one of three teams, which will be announced in the morning. Some of you will be aliens masquerading as humans. If you're an alien, your goal is to successfully capture a particular piece of technology whilst not being found out. If you're human, your goal is to find and capture the infiltrators and protect the technology at all costs. To keep everything impartial, we'll also have two civilian observers on-site." At the word 'civilian,' there were several frowns. "Any questions?"

A hand went up in the front. "Sir, where are the observers?"

"They'll be joining us in the morning. Anything else?"

Johnson was next. "When we capture the alien team, what do we do with them?"

"The human teams will tag the aliens and will need to contain them by posting their own guards." Martha had offered the tagging system she'd seen on her own very first off-world trip: a Sharpie. Colonel Fielding hadn't been impressed. "Anything else?" There was nothing. "Dismissed."

* * *

><p>Ianto waited until he'd shut the door and activated the small scrambler he'd packed to jam any surveillance in their room. Jack sat on the edge of one of the narrow beds, bouncing up and down as Ianto hung their coats in the empty wardrobe.<p>

"Remind me," Ianto said. "Was one of the goals to antagonise UNIT while we're here?"

"I call it a side benefit rather than a goal."

"Mm."

"They're mad that we have to do this. They don't like me, they don't like our methods. If Fielding wants to make this into a pissing contest, I can reach a lot farther."

"Those of us in the middle getting wet aren't as happy."

Jack frowned. "I'm going to keep the rest of you safe. Don't worry about it."

"You pay me to worry."

"And you're worried now because?"

"I'm not."

"You are."

"Why did you kick that man off the UNIT team?" He sat on the other bed.

"I've run into him before. I don't trust him, and I don't want him near my people."

"Care to elaborate?"

"Not tonight. Can I tell you the story another time?" Just another Jack secret, then. Probably an ex. Jack ran into enough of those for Ianto to be happy skipping the details.

"Of course." A change of subject would help, he decided. "Ready to call Gwen?"

Jack tapped his ear. "Gwen? You miss us?"

_"Have they kicked you out yet?"_

"Wait until breakfast."

_"Don't antagonise them, Jack. We need their help."_

Ianto said, "That's what I told him."

_"Ianto, keep a tight leash on him."_

"Speaking of leashes ... " Jack said.

_"We weren't,"_ said Gwen. _"I've been noticing some unusual Rift activity near where we found our squishy friend last night. I'm going to keep an eye on it, and probably ask Rhys to help me check out the site in the daylight."_

"Be careful. If you see anything out of the ordinary, call us. We can be back there in a couple of hours."

_"By which point it will have eaten Cardiff."_

"Gwen ... "

_"I'll call if there's trouble. I promise."_

Jack's face got that pained, worried look. They were too far away to offer help. Jack hated splitting the team for this reason, but here they were.

_"Ianto, tell him to stop worrying. Have fun on your holiday."_

"It's not a holiday," Jack said. "It's a vital training exercise. Ask anyone."

_"Good night,"_Gwen replied and clicked off.

Jack took out his earpiece and set it on the small desk, followed by his wrist strap. At home, this was his ritual, symbolically setting aside Torchwood time and slipping into their time. Ianto's tie would come off, their shoes would go by the door. Within the walls of their flat, they were just two blokes snatching mouthfuls of normality between disasters.

Jack had replaced all the cheap pots and pans in the kitchen with good cast iron and steel, and he was teaching Ianto how to cook. Ianto had reorganised his shelves to accommodate Jack's growing DVD collection, and he was expanding Jack's music and film knowledge to media released after the middle of last century. At work, Jack was his employer, involved with making life-or-death decisions that Ianto followed every day. At home, Ianto's landlady left wedding magazines in the foyer that she said her grandson and his young man had found ever so useful in planning their ceremony. Ianto was both mortified and touched, and he scooted the magazines out of sight whenever possible.

"So," said Jack. "We're cut loose for the evening. Just you, me," he bounced on the bed again, "and these uncomfortable single-man bunks. Remind you of old times?"

"Too much."

Jack grabbed his arm and tugged him onto his lap for a simple kiss. "What do you say we make use of one of the semi-private showers?"

"Not worried you might be fraternising with the enemy? My team could be the aliens. You'd never know until we ate your kidneys for our tea."

Jack wrapped his arms around Ianto. "I'll risk it." He went in for another kiss, which Ianto broke.

"Um. Before this goes any further, I remembered what I forgot to pack."

* * *

><p>There was a knock at the door. Lois looked up from the novel she was reading. Johnson already had her hand casually on her gun as she said, "Come in."<p>

The door cracked open. Rupesh and Perry stood outside. "Are you occupied?"

"Not really," Lois said, and set the book down as they came in. These rooms didn't have much in the way of seating. Rupesh sat himself at the end of Johnson's bed without asking. Perry remained standing.

"It's too early to sleep," Rupesh said. "I thought we'd be occupied the full time."

"What are you reading?" Perry asked, craning his neck to see the spine of Lois's book. The novel was a trashy romance she'd picked up on a whim. Embarrassed, she flipped it over.

"Nothing. Did you bring anything good?" Perry was a bookworm. Lois rarely liked any of what he had, but books were a subject that got him talking. People who talked were useful, and distracted. She made a quick glance at Johnson while Perry went on about something he was reading with rocket ships.

"I have a pack of cards," Johnson said abruptly. "In my other bag. It's still in the car."

Lois took out the spare keys to the SUV. "Perry, could I ask you to be a dear?"

"Of course." He smiled, and it hurt, a little. He was always so eager to please. "What does it look like?"

"Black. Small." Johnson was making this up, and her imagination wasn't on par with the least well-written romance novel. "In the boot."

"All right. I'll be back in a moment."

Rupesh opened his mouth as soon as the door closed, but Johnson held up her hand. "We're almost certainly being observed by someone."

He paused, then turned to Lois, speaking each word carefully. "Did you know what the war games were going to be?"

"No. I tried asking, but Ianto said this was his project. I'm in the dark." Not that it mattered, she thought grimly. This was just postponing the inevitable, not preventing anything.

Reading her mind, Johnson said, "Regarding projects, when do you anticipate working on yours? Since we have unexpected free time."

"Not now. I don't have all the materials I need gathered in one place. I'll work on it back at the Hub."

Rupesh blustered in, "Now would be ideal."

Johnson said, "You could do the prep work here." She looked at the door, and gave a nod indicating the room across the corridor. "Not all accidents happen at home, and the war games are going to be dangerous." Johnson wasn't as married to the ideas of 'bloodless' or 'capture,' though she'd take them when available. If Lois gave up the idea of capture, she could easily arrange something while they were out in the woods. Nothing would take down the Captain for long, but if Ianto were to be killed in an apparent accident, Jack would be distraught. It would be simple to take him and Gwen down when they returned to Cardiff. Dr Jones might meet with an accident of her own, possibly the same one, terribly tragic, and Lois could call in the arrest at the funeral, when surely not even Jack Harkness would have a weapon ready.

Just the thought made her ill. The eager look on Rupesh's face didn't help.

She couldn't push this off indefinitely. Two weeks had passed since she'd been given her orders, and Mr Gloucester would want to see results.

"If the opportunity presents itself," she said. "I'll see what I can do."

Their heads whipped around to the knock at the doorframe. "That was fast," Johnson said. "Come in."

To Lois's surprise, Jack bounded into the room. "Are we disturbing anything sordid? Please say yes."

Her heart slammed in her chest. Had they been eavesdropping? Did they know the plan?

But Jack's grin was his "I'm naughty, don't you know?" smile, and he was followed inside by Ianto wearing his "Seriously, this is my life" face. They didn't know.

"You caught us," Johnson said, throwing her legs over the edge of the bed to set her feet on the hard floor. She was still wearing her boots. "The three of us were about to have mad, passionate sex."

Jack turned to Ianto. "I told you. Pay up."

Ianto ignored him. "We're bored. Jack brought cards."

"I always bring a pack of cards. You never know how much downtime you're going to have on these things."

"When he suggests strip poker, say no."

"Fantastic," Johnson said, and elbowed Rupesh until he helped swing the room's small desk between the two beds to act as a table.

"We need more seats," Jack said, looking around the room. "If we're all sitting next to each other, we'll see the cards."

"Just don't cheat," said Johnson.

"Nah, too hard."

Perry returned before they were completely settled. "I didn't find the bag, but I found this." He held a squat black cool box Lois remembered from the boot. Ianto leapt up from his seat.

"Oh, perfect. I forgot we packed this." He opened it up and parcelled out the makings for sandwiches. The bread had gone soggy, and the only choices were ham, pastrami, or cheese, but after the brief dinner they'd eaten, everything was delicious.

Jack was about to make an objection, but Ianto handed him a slapped-together sandwich. "It's your favourite. Eat."

They played originally for crisps until they were all eaten, and then for imaginary money.  
>No-one took Jack up on the strip poker, even when he offered up clothing pieces of his own as extra collateral. The well-worn red cards slapped against each other, slid across the table, were huddled against noses like grannies did, yielding up their faint pasteboard smell. Rupesh only won one hand, when everyone else folded at the first bet. Perry and Ianto were decent players, though they were sitting side by side and seemed to be sneaking looks off each other's hands. Lois won twice just paying attention to which one was peeking when, and making her bets accordingly.<p>

An hour later, Johnson was up a thousand pounds thanks to a bluff on a pair of twos, then Jack took the lead with a series of improbable hands. Lois was sure he cheated, but couldn't prove it, and hoped the six hundred pounds she ended up in the hole remained imaginary. Still, Jack kept the conversation moving, bringing in Perry who was shy, and Lois who was pretending to be. He was a terrible manager, she had months of reports backing up that observation, but he was good with people. Everyone lit up around him when he smiled, wanting to please him. She felt it too, gnawing inside herself like a curse.

"Okay, bedtime for good little girls and boys," Jack announced, tossing down his last hand.

"It's only ten o'clock," Rupesh said. "We don't finish work until now some nights."

"Tomorrow's going to come early. Teams to meet, aliens to fight. Sweet dreams, everyone." He ushered the rest of the men out of the room with him, leaving Lois and Johnson alone.

"It wouldn't be difficult," Johnson said, as if the intervening hours hadn't occurred. "The Captain doesn't trust me, but he does trust you. So do Jones and Cooper. You can use that. Give me the word in advance."

"The word is 'wait,'" Lois said, and readied herself for bed although she wasn't going to be able to sleep anytime soon.

* * *

><p>Rhys couldn't beg off work this morning, which was just as well. Although Gwen enjoyed having him nearby, she could not prevent her feeling of relief when he was well away from Torchwood business and Torchwood danger. As she swept over the pavement with her handheld scanner, recording the fluctuations in Rift energy, she was also relieved he didn't see how boring her job could be, giant jellies notwithstanding.<p>

Two girls, perhaps nineteen years old, stopped to watch her. Gwen nodded at them.

"Making a movie?"

Gwen blinked, but the girl who'd asked gave a hopeful smile.

"Scouting for locations. Good guess." She made a show of holding the scanner like a camera.

"I told you," the girl said to her mate, poking her with an elbow. "What's it going to be, then? Something romantic?"

Gwen remembered the film Rhys had been watching last night. "Sorry, no. Science fiction epic. Lots of aliens." She was struck with inspiration. "We've been filming in other locations around the city already. You might have seen our work." BBC Wales filmed around the city at times; Jack still crowed about one programme they'd aired where, if you paused just right, an actual Weevil stood in the back of one scene.

"No way," said the second girl, glancing around in case a hidden film star might pop out of the street.

"I've seen them," said the first girl authoritatively. "Just last week, I told you, I saw that man chasing the big weird thing down off Cranbrook Street."

"You never said."

"I did!"

Last week. Last week. Oh God, last week with the fucking space kangaroos. "Tall bloke, good looking? May have tried to chat you up?"

"Good looking, yeah." The girl grinned. "I thought he looked famous."

The scanner beeped. Gwen ignored the girls for a moment while she compared the readings to what they saw earlier. The fluctuations were stabilising, but not going down. A few sites around the area had permanent levels of Rift activity, like that one place in Bute Park. No new steady locations had formed since the alien Botanists had left, just the regular spikes. She wasn't sure she liked the idea of seeing more hotspots on the rise.

"So who is he?"

"Hm?" Gwen looked up. The girls were still watching her, eager for celebrity gossip.

"He's famous, right? That man I saw?"

"Oh yes," Gwen said. "He's a star."

She made a note to add this site to their regularly-monitored locations. Hopefully there weren't more jellies on the way.

* * *

><p>Martha woke to the sound of her mobile ringing, and bleary-eyed she tried to shut off her alarm before she realised it wasn't set. "Hello?"<p>

"I woke you. Sorry."

Her mouth spread into a loopy smile. "It's okay. My boyfriend's still asleep."

Tom's laugh carried over the line. "I know you'll be busy. I just wanted to say good morning, and I love you."

"Good morning. I love you, too." She rolled to a sitting position. That was getting harder every day. "What are you doing today?"

"Nothing exciting. I'm working eight to eight. I have a meeting at three with the Directors."

"Exciting."

"It's no alien invasion, but we make our own fun." He hesitated. "Tish called. I told her you were busy with UNIT. You may want to phone her to see what she wanted."

Martha checked the time. It could wait. Her sister was calling almost every day to ask how Martha was feeling, if the baby had moved, or just to chat. They'd always been close, but now Tish was present in a way she hadn't been, even after that bloody missing year. Martha didn't want to come out and ask if she was upset her younger sister was married and going to have a baby before she did.

"I'll call tonight."

With a final exchange of "I love yous," they rang off. Martha crawled out of bed, went through her morning routine, and headed to the mess.

She chose a light breakfast from the spread, much better than what had been available last night, and took a seat with her colleague Dr Simmons. This gave her a vantage point to the door as UNIT and Torchwood personnel staggered in towards the coffee urn, as well as easy access to the bathroom if her stomach acted up again.

After breakfast, the teams met up in the conference room. Ianto carried in the packets, which he and Lois handed out while Jack spoke.

"Inside your packet, you'll find your team and if you're a human or an alien pretending to be a human. You'll need to work with the other members of your team to discover the identities of any infiltrators and detain them, and save the artefact."

Ianto produced the "artefact" from his case, and a laugh shot around the room at the sight of a bog roll spray-painted silver.

Jack waited for quiet before continuing. "If you're an alien, you need to make contact with the other aliens without alerting suspicion, steal the artefact, and bring it to the alien meeting site by tomorrow evening at nine PM. The aliens are a de facto team of their own."

A hand went up. "Yeah?"

"Captain, won't the Torchwood team have the advantage of knowing who the aliens are?"

"There isn't a Torchwood team. Two Torchwood members are on each team, and only Mr Jones and I know who the aliens are. We're not telling."

Martha privately thought she might be able to do something about that. She slid open her own packet: _Gold Team, human_. There was an additional handwritten note. _"Martha, you and Rupesh will function as medics for all three teams."_The note was signed with a smiley face.

Jack said, "You'll score points for your teams by performing well in the training exercises and by winning the simulation. If your team has the most points by the end of the game, all team members receive a week's paid holiday." He glanced at Colonel Fielding, who nodded.

No voices broke out, but Martha could see the sudden interest in the room. Holidays were regulated at UNIT, and nearly impossible to come by at Torchwood.

Colonel Fielding explained the rest of the training exercises. UNIT personnel not involved with the mission had simulated an alien crash site, which everyone would "investigate" after lunch. Meanwhile, both groups would engage in cross-training with their counterparts to compare and coordinate systems. That was of course polite speak for "spy on each other's methods," but since everyone in the room knew that, it didn't count as a lie.

"As Captain Harkness said, points will be given for good work. Our civilian observers will assign the points." The door opened. The first person who walked in was a man Martha didn't know.

The second was her mother.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

* * *

><p>Jack gave Francine a friendly wave when she came into the room. He'd prefer to sweep her up in a hug, but that could wait. She nodded back to him regally, saving her smile for Martha, who was already on her feet.<p>

"Mum, what are you doing here?"

Colonel Fielding said, "Mr Weeds and Mrs Jones have agreed to observe our exercises. UNIT has worked with Mr Weeds before." Jack bit the inside of his cheek. Mr Weeds had nothing to do with UNIT. He was in the chain of bureaucrats Torchwood was forced to navigate during budget season, and his was the office to which they most often had to resubmit forms when miniscule errors came back circled with red and stamped "Disallowed"; Ianto had invented new swear words to describe the man.

"And Mrs Jones is here as my guest," Jack said. "Our initial observer had to back out at the last minute, and she agreed to take his place." He glanced at Martha, whose expression had frozen.

Fielding said, "Please break into your teams to get acquainted. When you're finished, you may begin work." Everyone stood and began their haphazard human shuffle with coughs and mutters indicating slow movement towards their destinations without wanting to be the first person there.

"Red Team, please meet here," Ianto said, just loud enough to be heard.

Jack began scanning the room for Blue Team, when he found himself pushed up against a wall with two hands at his shirt collar. He was not subsequently snogged within an inch of his life, more was the pity. "Martha?"

She said in a very quiet voice that nonetheless carried in the suddenly-quiet room: "Why did you bring my mother here?"

Jack brought his hands up defensively. "Because she wanted to come?" He shot a look to Francine, who placed a hand on Martha's shoulder.

"Calm down."

"I am calm. You'll be able to tell when I am no longer calm."

Jack went to disagree with her and then dropped that idea quickly. "We were on the phone yesterday when I got the word that my observer couldn't make it."

Mum said, "I offered to come instead. I know about aliens, and I wanted a chance to see you. Tish was supposed to call you and let you know I was on my way."

Martha finally dropped her hold and pretended as though she hadn't grabbed him. Jack himself refused to look around to see who'd just watched the head of Torchwood nearly beaten up by a tiny pregnant woman. The buzz of conversation grew again.

"She called the house instead of my mobile. You were chatting yesterday?" Martha's voice was pleasant but retained that edge of 'I will kill you where you stand, do not think I won't.' Jack knew for a fact that pointing out Lucia had been the same way when she was pregnant would be a fatal mistake.

"I called to thank him for the lovely Christmas present he sent. Martha, if you'd prefer I leave, I can."

"Um," said Jack. He wouldn't stop her, but her absence would leave him in a very bad position.

"I can leave," Francine repeated.

"I don't want you to leave," said Martha. "I was just surprised." She reserved a glare for Jack. "You could have said."

He raised his hands again. "Sorry?"

She sighed, and he took the chance to slip past her and find the rest of his team, who were watching him with varying degrees of amusement. Rupesh's grin was the widest. Jack filed that note away for later. Behind him, Martha was still talking with her mother.

Jack took a good look at his team: three men, three women, Torchwood's keen but wet doctor, and himself. None of the others could be older than twenty-five. He'd done a training exercise with UNIT back when Alex had been in charge, so call it 1997. Everyone standing here would have been children. Jack's own current lover wouldn't have been quite fourteen years old the last time Jack did this, and Jack himself had lived a lot longer than the official years in the interim. He wondered how many of the UNIT personnel he'd worked with back then were even still alive, how many of the people in this room would be alive the next time he played war games with them.

He could feel his expression falter and he reapplied extra charm. "Okay, let's get started. I'd like your names, ranks, and telephone numbers." A few of them laughed. Rupesh rolled his eyes.

He noticed Martha give her mum a hug and then join her own team.

Time to work.

* * *

><p>Setting Perry up with the research and development department turned out to be more difficult than Ianto had reckoned. There were five other technicians spread out amongst the three teams, but as soon as the time came to break into specialties, the second tech on Red Team began firing questions Perry couldn't answer, and was soon joined by his friends.<p>

Unfortunately, these were questions such as: "What university did you attend?" and when another team member picked up on Perry's military background, "What rank did you hold?"

Perry was self-effacing by nature, and had only been in this century for a few months. His faked personal history would stand up to a solid background search, even by UNIT, but it wasn't as robust under direct questioning. He continued to drop his eyes and tried to hide inside his own clothes. "Sorry, I don't ... "

Ianto knew the false information, had created most of the paper trail himself, but if he jumped in, it would only make things worse. He cringed inwardly in sympathy.

"Excuse me." Lois's polite tone cut across the next question.

The contemptuous expression on the current tech's face, Lieutenant Blickman by the name on his uniform, said volumes about being interrupted by a slight PA with a soft voice. Lois smiled back. "I'm afraid I need to know your name and what level of classified information you're authorised to hear." She poised over her clipboard.

"We're all authorised here. It's in our files."

"Yes, but do you have high enough clearance to access information about Mr Fletcher?" She said Perry's name with a touch of reverence. Ianto followed her lead.

"I'm afraid she's right. We'll need copies of your authorisation documents signed by your commanding officer. Fletcher's credentials are classified as top secret."

Blickman didn't look convinced, but the other faces in the group began regarding Perry a bit more speculatively. Perry himself straightened up and even offered a quiet smirk.

"If we could get on with the training," he said. "We have some things to show you."

Ianto didn't miss the grateful look Perry gave Lois as the two of them headed away. When they were in the corridor, he told her, "That was quick thinking."

"Not really. I came up with it last night after the Colonel was asking about him." She seemed pleased with herself, though. "Are they going to be like this the whole time?"

"Like what?"

"Pricks." It was always funny when Lois swore.

"They're just taking the piss. If you let them get to you, they win. Don't worry, we'll get ours."

He was due to join the other field agents at the firing range, but he wanted to ensure Lois was properly introduced to her own counterpart first. He led her to the office of one Mitchell de la Paz, and held the door. The desk was empty when they went inside, but Ianto could hear someone rummaging around in the adjoining room. "Mitch, stop wanking and come out here."

There was a laugh, and a moment later, a corporal in fatigues joined them. "I was wondering when you'd drop by." He shook hands with Ianto. "You must be Lois." He shook her hand just as politely. UNIT did take their harassment policies more seriously than Torchwood did.

"Pleased to meet you." Lois had spoken to him on the phone twice, but mainly they had communicated via email. Mitch was Ianto's favourite contact person in UNIT, the only one who understood exactly what it was like to be responsible for getting things organised and making sure they were done correctly and on time whilst everyone else got on with the business of saving the world.

Mitch said, "I don't think I congratulated you properly on your promotion. You left us behind, mate."

"You know the way it goes. They promote you to where they can keep a better eye on you. Now I'll have to use Lois to continue my plan to overthrow Torchwood."

Mitch laughed, and after a moment, Lois did too.

* * *

><p>Martha watched her mother leave with Colonel Fielding for a private tour of the grounds. Mum already fit in with her surroundings as if she belonged here, nodding genially at the young soldiers. If Martha didn't know better, she'd easily believe Mum was a real inspector, come to oversee the training. She felt as nervous as she had when Mum had volunteered in the classroom when Martha was eight. Any minute, Mum would berate the Colonel for giving Martha low marks, and Martha would sink right through the floor.<p>

She'd get Jack back for this later.

Martha put on a professional face as she showed Rupesh the medical facilities. They were due to meet up with the exobiology experts in fifteen minutes. "You'll be familiar with most of this. UNIT doesn't have all of Torchwood's gadgets, but we're well-stocked."

Rupesh bounced on the balls of his feet. He looked around eagerly, head bobbing in politeness to the medical staff as Martha made introductions. "This is all still pretty new to me," he said, hand floating over a deep-tissue scanner. It wasn't quite as high-tech as the Bekaran scanner, and Martha still wanted to talk Jack into loaning that to UNIT for study, but theirs was dead useful.

"You never get over the 'Wow!' factor," Martha said with a smile. "I spent over a year working with and for the Doctor, and I still get amazed over what we find." She led him to a med suite to check out the standard set-up. If anyone during the exercise was injured, the two of them would be expected to deal with it here. Martha had privately stocked a bag with a few handy items in case of bruises, breaks, or worse.

"Jack doesn't talk about the Doctor much."

"He wouldn't." For a moment, she recalled a man so desperate to see the Doctor again he held on to the end of the universe. She'd wondered during the long year after if that would be her one day, literally clinging to someone who couldn't stand the sight of her.

Martha put on a fake smile and changed the subject. "Now, I know you've never seen one of these before."

"What is it?"

She held out her hands. "As far as we can tell, it's a temporally-displaced diagnostic tool. It doesn't just tell you if you're sick today, it's calibrated to give you the likelihood of developing cancer, diabetes, or other debilitating diseases on a five-year spectrum."

His eyes lit up, just as hers had. "Is it accurate?"

"The researchers say yes."

"You?"

"Well, I've been around enough to wonder if it predicts your disease or gives one to you."

Rupesh's hands dropped from the scanner instantly, and Martha laughed inside her head.

* * *

><p>Jack had been expecting this, but anticipation did nothing to prevent his gut-clench when he saw Sergeant Trent waiting for him on his way to the mess. Jack could walk past, no-one would blame him for walking past.<p>

He stopped.

"Captain. May I have a word?"

No, that gut-clench wasn't going anywhere. Jack glanced around, but none of his people were nearby, and fortunately, neither were Francine or Martha. "Sure." He indicated a building, where they could step around the side, and maybe Jack could strangle Trent and have this over with. "Something on your mind, Sergeant?"

"Sir, I ... "

"Don't call me 'sir,'" Jack said sharply. "Personal favour. I only let people I like call me that."

"Yes, Captain." Trent swallowed. This encounter was clearly difficult for him, and Jack wasn't making it easier. He refused to care. Trent said, "I wanted to tell you that I requested to be added to this mission. Don't blame Colonel Fielding."

"Fine. I'll blame you."

Trent nodded. "I thought I could be helpful to you. Make amends."

Jack barked out a painful laugh. Amends? Just thinking about it all made his skin ache with old wounds. "Kill anyone lately, Trent?"

"Not since you." Trent met his eyes, and his voice was steady.

"That's all right then." Jack's voice was full of ice, but the ice wasn't having any effect except to flow back into Jack's veins. He took a deep breath. "You know, this would be a hell of a lot easier if Retcon worked on you."

"You don't think I wish the same thing? How much was in that last dose you gave me? I was out for most of the next day."

"A lot. I wanted to be sure the second time. Not sure I trust that first batch I whipped up."

"Everyone else's held. It was so strange, talking to the others and them having no idea what happened. I'm sure you tested them like you did me. Invited them for a quiet drink, smiled and flirted for a bit, and if they didn't recognise you, cut them loose again. Am I right?"

Jack shrugged. Someone had to do the cleanup work. "Perkins blabbed about Project Indigo to me, can you believe it?" Perkins had shot Jack in the face once. He could still remember the feeling of his teeth growing back.

"He never could hold his booze. I'm not him. I can keep secrets."

"Good for you. Keep them somewhere else, away from me and away from my team." Jack's fingers itched. He'd gladly pummel Trent into the ground, into the wall, smash his face in and wipe the blood off his knuckles. "Martha doesn't recognise you, 'cause she only knew you for about an hour. But her mother is here on the base."

Trent paled. "What? Why?"

"Because I invited her. And if she sees you, she's going to remember you, and then things are going to be very bad for everyone. Now, I love Francine, and I know she's a much better person than I'm ever going to be, but I'm not sure you'll walk out of that room alive if she sets her mind otherwise, and I will not stop her." An overstatement, perhaps. Letitia had helped rescue Lucy Saxon, and for all that the madwoman had inflicted on them, Tish had merely punched her in the face. But Francine had gone for a gun, once.

"I never hurt her, nor her daughters." Trent had not been on the team that killed Leo, either.

"Would you have if he gave you the order?"

Trent dropped his eyes.

"That's what I thought." Jack's nightmares rarely included Trent's face, just his gun. The times he'd shot Jack were the more pleasant memories. But the Master had found Jack's team, and his family. "Stay away from them all. You get one warning, and this was it."

"I understand."

Jack's hadn't been the only family tracked down, and he could spare a small amount of pity. "How's your daughter?"

Trent's mouth formed a hard smile. "Growing up. Her mother left me. Said I wasn't the same, and I couldn't tell her, could I?" He took a shaky breath. "How's yours?"

"Alive."

Trent nodded. "I'm sure you don't believe me, but I'm glad to hear that."

"If I ever find out you're even in the same city with her, you won't have time for another warning."

Jack's fingers itched more. Just one punch, just one squeeze of this man's neck. That was all he wanted. And he couldn't, not and deal with himself tomorrow. Trent hadn't been the worst of them by far, merely a man doing a horrifying job because he'd been cowed by what the Master would order the Toclafane to do to his own family.

Trent could have refused, could have said he wouldn't shoot Jack in the head again, could have refrained from dragging a terrified, weeping Toshiko into the boiler room for the Master to break. He could have done more than stand by idly when person after person Jack loved was murdered. One of the UNIT soldiers guarding Jack had refused to help, had of course died for it, and the Master had made a messy example of the soldier's grandmother. Jack could hate Trent for following an order to bludgeon someone to death, but had the man refused, it would have been Trent's own child next. Jack reserved his killing anger for those who'd helped happily, mean little men promised power for the discount price of selling out their fellow humans. Down in the bowels of the ship, Jack hadn't met many of these. The gossip Tish brought was enough, that and the shuddering horror on her face. "He was here again," she'd say but she never needed to, Jack could read her moods like the books he wasn't permitted. "The Weasel."

The Weasel was the worst of a select, bad crowd, an ugly (Jack thought, he'd never seen the man's face) gash on humanity's soul who tallied up the slaves to build the Master's rockets, who implemented the day-to-day horrors. The Weasel drew up plans for the relocation camps, with the Master's happy approval, and the Weasel cut off supplies, starving them. Tish heard from one of the guards that when the refugees were hungriest, the Master sent in his pets to cut down half the survivors and leave them to choose between cannibalism and death.

Maybe it was just rumour. Jack hoped it was just rumour.

And then he wouldn't even giggle. A mad giggle, a chuckle, something to show he was clearly as insane as the Master. Jack could have comprehended that. But Tish said the Weasel only ever got this little smile, pleased at a job well accomplished. He hadn't been on the _Valiant_when the reset occurred, and had his memories of that year rolled back along with everyone else. The bastard was alive somewhere, and Jack didn't even know his name.

Comparatively speaking, Trent was just some poor bastard who couldn't be Retconned.

"Sir, I mean, Captain?"

Jack's eyes snapped back to Trent's face, and he realised his own breathing was laboured, quick. He had the stink of the boiler room in his nose, and his wrists ached.

"Are you all right?"

Jack said, "Go. I'm not going to kill you today. But I meant what I said."

"Yes, Captain. Thank you." Trent scuttled away, shoulders hunched against what were surely horrible memories of his own.

Jack had lost his appetite. He made himself go anyway, catching sight of his team as he entered the mess. He took a bottle of water and joined them.

"What? No-one's sitting with their new best friends?"

The expressions he received in return were enough of an answer. He sat across from Ianto, who put his own fork down and took in Jack's water. "Not hungry?"

"I want to keep sharp for the exercise this afternoon." He took a long gulp, and checked out Ianto's utterly unconvinced expression. "How'd your mornings go, people?"

Rupesh launched into descriptions of the new medical tech Martha had shown him, while Perry asked questions. Jack smiled and nodded in the right places, but from time to time he caught Ianto watching him.

* * *

><p>To the surprise of no-one, Colonel Fielding came in halfway through lunch to announce an alien spaceship had just crash landed, conveniently a few miles from their current position in the wilderness surrounding the base. Rupesh made an effort at mock surprise, which he stopped the second he noticed he was the only one.<p>

"Work with your teams," said Fielding. "In the spirit of inter-agency cooperation, share what information you can. But remember, we've had reports of infiltration by aliens who look like humans, so everyone be on your guards."

Martha saw her mother walk in to stand beside the Colonel, joined by Mr Weeds. Before she could offer Mum a ride to the site, Fielding had turned with a pleasant smile and an extended arm to carry the observers to the site in his own jeep. Mum had begged off lunch with her as well, in order to dine with Fielding.

Martha frowned.

"Problem?" Jack asked, gathering together Blue Team for the journey.

"I think Colonel Fielding is hitting on my mum."

Jack glanced over, quickly noticing the smiles. "Looks like."

"But that's weird."

"Why? Your mum's hot."

Something more disturbing than the Colonel's interest in her mother asserted itself. Martha's head spun, and hers wasn't the only one. "Tell me you never did."

"Never did what?"

"Never mind. I don't want to know." She joined Johnson and Lois. "Ready?"

Lois smiled worriedly. Johnson said, "This is stupid. And yes."

* * *

><p>Colonel Fielding kept the flattery polite, unsuccessful in his attempt to mimic what he thought must be Jack's secret to winning favour, meanwhile not opening himself up to charges of harassing the civilians. Francine wasn't fooled, but she did let herself enjoy the attention. Mr Weeds seemed less impressed, but Francine had pegged him early on as a lost cause.<p>

Fielding drove the jeep himself, pointing out buildings. "That's the armoury," he said, indicating a large, square brick structure set back from the road, with extra guards posted outside. "UNIT has access to the most advanced weapons technology on Earth. We don't keep it all here, naturally." He laughed at his own poor joke.

"Naturally." Francine read the signs on the buildings, but most were labelled with alphabetical indicators rather than names. She recognised what appeared to be a hangar. "What's in there?"

"More research and development, ma'am. Cutting-edge work in aeronautics and engine design."

"To what end?" This was from Mr Weeds. "Will the designs be used for military work?"

"Defence of the planet from extraterrestrial threats, UNIT's mission from day one."

"As is Torchwood's," said Mr Weeds. "It does make one wonder why we require the duplication of effort."

Francine decided she didn't like Mr Weeds.

Their jeep arrived at the "crash" at the same time as the rest of the teams. Francine had a notebook in which to record her own findings. What no-one had explained except in the most passing manner was what her findings ought to be. Yes, she knew about aliens. She'd been tricked and imprisoned by one, and allowed to keep her memories after. None of that qualified her for observing professional alien-hunters, especially when one of them was her daughter. Jack had sworn it would be fine.

Martha stood back as the UNIT soldiers and Jack's people swarmed over the site and the spaceship. Francine walked over to her. "What's going on?"

"Right now? They're surveying the crash, looking for survivors and live sources of radiation or other power." She twisted her head. "Ooo, that one's being too eager."

Francine followed her gaze. A fresh-faced youth in UNIT fatigues opened a panel in the side of the ship. "Why do you say?"

"I watched him. He didn't scan first."

"Well, it's not a real ship."

"It is a real ship." Martha traced out the shape of the hull with her finger. "See the way the nacelles hang out to the sides? One's on the other side, you can't see it. The Derlax are the only ones nearby who use that sort of technology."

Francine stared at Martha, more fascinated by the fact that her lovely, intelligent, seemingly normal little girl had grown up to be an expert about spaceships. "Of course. Silly me. The Derlax."

The panel came open. The soldier screeched as blue dye sprayed all over his face and shirt. The others scrambled over to see what had happened, some of them turning away to laugh. Jack's laugh was the easiest to pick out.

"Excuse me," Martha said, and she walked over to the soldier. "Sergeant Wren, right?"

"Right, ma'am," he said, sheepish under his blue paint.

Martha looked him up and down. "In my professional opinion, this man is dead." She nodded to her colleague, that Torchwood doctor. "Dr Patanjali, would you care to confirm my diagnosis?"

Patanjali made a show of walking over and taking Wren's wrist to look for a pulse. He shook his head sadly. "I'm afraid there's nothing we can do for him." More chuckles followed the sergeant as he reported to Colonel Fielding to be relieved from the rest of the training.

"That's Blue Team down one technician," said someone. Oh yes, Jack's fellow. They'd come to the wedding together, along with another of Martha's friends from Torchwood and her husband. Jack had been maddeningly unforthcoming with exactly how to refer to his own Plus One, though Francine had burned with curiosity. Ianto had been polite, and Martha liked him, and Jack seemed happy. That was what mattered.

"He will be sorely missed," Jack said back. "We'll toast his memory tonight. Wren, you're buying." This earned another round of laughs.

"Are you going to make a note?" Martha asked.

"Hm?"

"About Wren. Not that I'd like to give my team an extra nudge, but he went against protocol and died."

"So he did." Francine wrote _Blue team, one casualty due to lack of attention._Another two technicians approached the panel. One had a scanning device in his hand, and was examining the readings. The other reached inside.

"Hold on," said the first, "let me take a reading."

"Wren already activated the booby trap here."

"Yes, but ... "

There was a second explosion of blue dye.

* * *

><p>The teams returned to the base some hours later, seven of them much bluer. On-board the alien craft had been two "survivors" who'd attacked the first exploratory group with paintballs. Jack was one of them, which then required a discussion amongst Fielding and the civilian observers, who voted two to one that, given Captain Harkness's unique circumstances, he was unlikely to be dead now.<p>

The "alien" survivors had been captured, and Lois rode in the lorry carrying them back to base, which was much better than riding in the lorry where Ianto was failing not to have a fit that Jack's coat was covered in blue. Lois handled most of the team's work-related laundry issues, but the care and upkeep of the greatcoat stayed in the hands of someone who knew how to sew.

"You're Torchwood, yeah?" asked one of the aliens.

Lois nodded. "General support, really. I don't do much field work."

"All I do is guard duty," said the alien. He wore a mask that made him look like one of those greys, with great big bug eyes, and a boiler suit not unlike those back in Cardiff. "This was a bit of a break."

"Hey," said the other alien. "Why aren't the Torchwood people dead, then? Wren and Kenny both got blued and had to leave."

"Captain Harkness had special dispensation to stay." UNIT command might be aware of Jack's special circumstances, but she didn't know whom amongst the rank and file needed to know.

"And the other chap?"

Perry had stood back with his scanner when the second panel had exploded all over the other Red Team technician. He'd ducked in time, but she'd observed the harsh looks from the other UNIT soldiers when Kenny had been declared dead and Perry allowed to stay despite a small splatter on one arm.

"I wasn't privy to the decision in his case."

"Bit lucky, though," said the second alien. "No Torchwood casualties but six UNIT deaths. Sound familiar, Arn?"

The first alien, whom Lois presumed to be Arn, shrugged.

Out of the six people sent inside the vessel, only Jack and Johnson had emerged "alive," Jack on his personal technicality, Johnson because she hadn't been shot with the paintballs. She'd retreated to a safer position, and her reinforcements helped subdue the threat.

"It's just the first day."

"We could be infecting you right now," said the second alien. "Sure, we've got handcuffs, and we're under guard," he nodded at the two soldiers riding with them, armed with their normal guns loaded with dye-filled Simunition rounds rather than bullets, "but maybe we've got the Delbation 'flu, right?"

"Yes," said Arn. "Maybe we've got mind control. We could make you lot turn this caravan right around and take us back to our ship."

"You won't get far without the secret bog roll," Lois said. Martha had taken the silver artefact for the Gold Team, but their technician had been careful to deactivate the booby trap inside it first.

The second alien, Lois never did learn his name, laughed evilly. "We'll get your bog roll." His bug eyes stared at her until she looked out the window.

Creep.

Her own card had said human. At least she wasn't a collaborator twice over.

* * *

><p>Gwen spent the day with the police radio on in the background as she caught up on her own projects. Although she was no longer chasing every missing persons case for Rift victims, she kept a file, part study, part scrapbook, documenting names and faces of the lost. With Jack's blessing, she pulled what records she could find on previous returnees over Torchwood's long and chequered past. Locked in the vaults and forgotten, he'd told her, glossing over the many who'd been euthanized outright.<p>

She'd been able to cross off three names thus far from the list of the missing and add them definitively to the list of the dead.

Gwen wasn't sure why she kept at it. All the current inmates at Flat Holm were named and accounted for. She didn't even have the fantasy of a joyous reunion to give her hope the way she did that first disastrous time with Jonah. At best, she could talk Jack into letting her fake a dead body for a family to mourn, yet none of her three finds even had family members left to care.

Her hand paused over a new face. Lauren Hawes, aged four, had disappeared a week ago from her own garden while her mother had popped inside the house to check on Lauren's infant sister. The police suspected an abduction, but the disappearance coincided too well with a negative spike for Gwen's belief. She couldn't tell that to the constables handling the case, couldn't offer the truth to the stricken family as a harsher comfort. All she could do was give Lauren a page in her notebook, and search through the old records for a returned little girl.

Gwen hoped she could find her.

The Rift alarm startled her from what was about to turn into a good cry. Gwen closed her notes and opened the system. Then she swore. "Rhys, love," she said into her mobile as she ran upstairs to her car, "I'll be home late."

* * *

><p>Rupesh followed the guards into the examination room. Their alien captives were dressed in silly costumes, nothing like real aliens. Rupesh had only been working with real aliens since November, but he'd been preparing to work with Torchwood for months, and he took in their outfits critically.<p>

"This is the best you could come up with?"

Alien One held up his wrists. "Can you loosen these, mate? They're tight." One of the guards - both of them were Gold Team like Martha - pulled out his manacle key.

"You won't shoot us with death rays, right?"

Rupesh sighed. He'd tried to get into the spirit of this, really. Torchwood and UNIT would work together to demonstrate their various techniques. But when he got down to it, what was the point of examining a normal human bloke?

"All right, all right," he said. "You in the boiler suit, bend over and cough."

There were a few chuckles, but Rupesh distinctly heard the word "Torchwood" in one of them. He sighed again.

Thank goodness Dr Jones chose that moment to come into the exam room. "How're things here? Have you processed these two dangerous fellows?"

"Not yet. How do you suggest we begin, Doctor?"

"You're the expert." She was playing with him now. "What's your procedure?"

Right. Rupesh took out his diagnostic scanner and ran it over the first alien. "No radiation, normal readings. Bit of hypertension." He glanced up. "You should keep an eye on that."

"Nothing unusual?" Martha asked.

"Not that I see." He took the scanner to the second alien. "Ah, it's giving a species identification, _homo sapiens unitus_." That got him a smile. "He's fine, too. Would you like to scan him to see if he'll need a new kidney in ten years?"

"I'll pass. Do you think we should dissect them?"

"We'll let the exobiologists do that. Where did they run off to, anyway?"

"The Colonel wanted a word. They'll be along directly." Martha covered a yawn with her hand.

This exercise was entirely pointless. They weren't aliens. The real aliens were back in Cardiff. Rupesh's card had said human, which meant he didn't even get to pretend he was a secret alien spy for fun.

The second alien moved his arms around, and belatedly, Rupesh saw he'd managed to slide his hand into a pocket. Before he could shout, his head filled with a weird ringing noise and he lost his balance. The aliens stayed on their feet, even as Rupesh clutched at the exam table.

"What is that?" Dr Jones asked, even as she fell to her knees, hands to her head.

"It's a stunner, ma'am. Perfectly safe. Sorry. No-one frisked us."

As Rupesh passed out, the second alien took out a large paint grenade and tossed it. The last thing Rupesh saw was blue.

* * *

><p>Martha's head ached. The second thing she noticed was the pounding. The cold, hard floor under her head was the third, and the stabbing bright lights in her eye the first.<p>

"Ow."

"You'll be all right." Dr Simmons sounded detached but kind. As she woke up, he offered her a hand to move to a sitting position. Rupesh and the two guards were waking up as well. The room was spattered in blue.

"They got us?"

"Not you," said Rupesh, still queasy. "There's only a bit on your leg." Martha glanced down, and sure enough, one sock was lost but the rest of her had escaped.

Her hand went to her abdomen. "What did they use? Has it been tested?"

"It's a neural stunner," said Simmons. "They've been testing it over in R&D."

"If my baby is born with three heads, I'm going to punch someone in R&D." A shudder moved through her, and she held out an arm to steady herself even as she sat. There was no possible way that device had been safely tested for ante natal use, dammit.

Ten seconds later, she heard shouting in the outer corridor. Jack was giving someone, probably Colonel Fielding, a very hard time. She could only hear snatches of actual words, but "What the HELL?" came through clearly.

A minute later, Jack burst into the exam room. Mum wasn't far behind. Jack crouched down between Martha and Rupesh. "Are you two all right?"

"Martha?" asked Mum.

"We're fine," Rupesh said, getting to his feet. "Blue, but fine."

"What the hell were they thinking?" Jack growled. "They could have seriously hurt you, all of you," he added, taking in the two blued guards. "UNIT is supposed to know how to handle technology."

"We do know, Captain," said Simmons.

Jack rounded on him, but before he could open his mouth, Mum got in first. "And how do you handle technology on a foetus? What if your little stun gun caused a miscarriage?"

"Mum, it's fine. I'm fine." Martha got to her feet. The worried looks on her mother's and friend's faces gave her pause. She thought the baby would be all right, but ... "I'll have a quick exam to make sure everything's okay with both of us. I'm already here anyway. All right?"

"Martha, dear, you should sit out the rest of the training exercise."

"No, I shouldn't. This is my job every day."

"Exposed to God knows what, and aliens too. Have you even considered ... "

" ... that I am at work right now and we can have this conversation later? Yes, I've considered that." The words came out sharp but Martha was in no mood to take them back. "If you'll excuse me. Rupesh, Hartley, Flynn, sorry to hear about your sudden deaths."

Martha stormed out.

* * *

><p>Nothing came over the radio as Gwen approached Church Street once again. No rampaging monsters, unusual medical conditions, or even meteorological anomalies were causing the populace of Cardiff to once again have to ignore all the damn aliens. Which was nice, she supposed. Gwen hated having to come up with cover stories. The "filming a movie" excuse had been one of her best in three years.<p>

Church Street was quiet, but not so quiet she'd worry about mass deaths. Everything pointed to a normal early evening, except for the boarded up window at the end of the street where the Jelly Monster had been. Gwen went into the nearby shops, had a look around the church, chatted up passers-by on the road.

The Rift monitor pinged as if she were standing on the interdimensional version of Chernobyl.

She tapped her ear. "Jack, do you have a minute?"

She waited, and then she heard, _"Go ahead."_

"I'm back at that same site. The Rift readings are going off the scale, but there's nothing here."

_"Have you knocked on doors to ask?"_

"No, because I am very stupid."

_"What did Mainframe say?"_

She summarised the data as best she could, hoping she didn't leave out anything important. Jack said little.

"It looks like this site may become a stable node. But Jack, we haven't seen one of those form in months. Why now?"

His pause went on a long time. _"I wish I knew. All right, you're absolutely sure you're not seeing anything?"_

Cars went by. The air was chilly, but not unusually so for this time of year. Workers had been to the Thomas & Rose and gone, the other shops and the churchyard appeared normal. "Not even a stray dog."

_"Just keep an ear out. When we get back, we'll do a full sweep of the place. Maybe the Rift is gearing up to spit out something big, and this is our early warning. In the meantime, see if you can dig up any earlier incidents in that area. Something's familiar about the place the more you tell me, but I don't know why."_

"Right."

The line went dead.

* * *

><p>Rupesh joined them for supper despite his "death." Ianto would normally be up for teasing him, but refrained. He noticed Jack holding back as well and wondered if he was also uncomfortably reminded of their last dead doctor walking. Less than a year had passed since the night of the bombs. Little things still stung. Then again, reminders of Lisa or his dad stung just as unexpectedly, if with less pain as time went by.<p>

He drank his water.

Jack frowned and tapped his ear. "Go ahead." He stood and walked out of the room. When he returned some minutes later, he didn't bother to hide his worry.

"How's Gwen?"

"She's getting massive readings at the place where we found the jelly alien, but nothing's come through. We may be going home in a hurry."

"Will we have to reschedule?" Lois asked.

"Eventually. Training is training." Jack cut and ate a large bite of roast.

Ianto sat back. Something ticked over in the back of his head, something about the Jelly Monster. "What else did she say?"

Jack shrugged. Fortunately, he swallowed before speaking. "It's got the makings of another permanent node."

"A what?" Johnson rarely looked confused. Angry or sullen, often. Annoyed or weary, oh yes. Evilly amused, only when she showed up someone on something. Confusion was new.

"Places where the Rift opens regularly. Bute Park, that spot on Hope Street, there's a subbasement in an old church that used to spit out something every week like clockwork." Jack smiled distantly. "Every Saturday at four, we'd take the team, wait outside, subdue whatever came through, then knock off for the rest of the weekend. That was, oh, 1952 to 1958. I loved that schedule."

"What does that mean for us?"

"Depends. If it's regular enough, it means we get to chase aliens at teatime. Otherwise, it's just another place to keep an eye on when things go crazy."

After supper, they were supposed to break into their teams for recreation time and to compare notes and suss out more clues. The two fake aliens had stolen the bog roll, but were "shot" by the Red Team, who now had possession. Ianto made Perry carry it. Before he could join his team in the rec area, Ianto felt a very familiar hand at his waist.

"Don't hurry." Jack's breath was warm in his ear. Ianto ought to shrug him off and get back to work. Team building was very important. On the other hand, he and Jack were a team, right? He smirked. "What's that for?" asked Jack, as they sidled into an empty corridor.

"Just making flimsy excuses in my head."

"Been there, done that. Ah. Here we go." Jack's eyes lit up as he surveyed the small supply room he'd located. Of course.

"We shouldn't be gone long. They'll wonder where we are."

Jack's mouth went to his neck. "Then we should stay gone forty minutes at least so they know exactly where we went."

"Mm." The supply room had that dusty, disused appearance common even in high-tech facilities. There always needed to be storage space for extra ringbinders and pens, folding chairs, and all the little fiddly items without which no bureaucracy could function. For Ianto, it was one with a hundred school cupboards, a thousand back office closets. For Jack, it was significantly cheaper than another visit to the sex shop (Jack had provided them seed money back in the 1970s; the clerks had taken to greeting Ianto on sight with fresh recommendations).

He ought to push Jack away. They were technically working, and they had a rule about this.

"We're not at the Hub, we're not out on a mission," said Jack, picking the thoughts right out of Ianto's head. His hands were under Ianto's shirt reaching for skin. "It'll be fine." He met Ianto's mouth for a soft kiss, far more gentle than the press of his palms and the scratch of his blunt nails.

Ianto couldn't place what was missing. His own lips parted against Jack's mouth, brushing his tongue in to sweep against the perfect line of teeth. Jack sighed against him, familiar and sweet. Jack's thigh moved between his legs in just the right way, and Ianto's hand moved automatically to Jack's belt, ready to ease it open and slide inside his trousers.

But something was wrong.

Ianto pulled back his head. "What is it?"

"What's what?"

"Something's bothering you. Something's been bothering you."

Jack rubbed his erection against Ianto's leg. "Now that you mention it, yes, but I was trying to cure the problem."

He bent in for more kissing, but Ianto stopped him with his hand. "What's going on?"

"Nothing's going on."

Ianto folded his arms. He hated the pose, it reminded him of his Mam scolding Dad. God knew he was having enough problems convincing other people he wasn't "the girl" - even Gwen implied it sometimes when she knew very well that was completely missing the point - to invoke his mother right now. But needs must, as Mam often had said.

"I'll be in the rec room." Ianto straightened his clothing, grateful he wasn't hard, and he walked out.

He found the recreation room without difficulty and met up with Perry and the survivors of the Red Team. He was in time to be dealt in for the first hand of an impromptu poker game. Jack came in a minute later, smiled pleasantly, and joined the other Blues.

"Something come up?" Perry asked.

"Nothing important."


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three

* * *

><p>Martha eased herself into a chair at the edge of the room. The teams worked in loose groups, bonding over cards and quickly-jotted notes, and the whole atmosphere was less "top secret organisations dedicated to protecting the Earth from alien threats," and much more "uni students cramming for exams." Elimination exams, she amended, noting the groups were noticeably smaller than they had been this morning.<p>

Her left foot was encased in an inflatable boot to mimic the "injury" she'd sustained. Jack had offered to sign the cast by way of an apology. She'd declined.

"How are you feeling?"

Martha didn't look at her mother. "Fine. Everything looks normal. I'm seeing my doctor next week."

"Good." Francine took a seat beside her. "I asked how you were."

"I'm fine, Mum." She gestured at the teams. "Shouldn't you be listening in on discussions?"

"I have been. Red Team has the Artefact still. Their technician has analysed it. Their archivist claims it's a vital piece of equipment for a particular religious sect of the aliens."

"I have a vision. The words 'porcelain god' were spoken?" In deadpan, no doubt.

"Blue Team is concerned about the aliens themselves. Their exobiologist has been comparing them to other known species. This is hindered by one of their weapons experts, who keeps launching into tales of sleeping with each species mentioned."

"Ah. Any good stories?"

Mum shrugged. "I still refuse to believe the one about the two-headed ambidextrous frog. Your team is keeping to themselves. I saw plenty of notes, but I couldn't read them."

"I'll have to join in. Find out what the fuss is."

"I'm not sure I understand what's going on."

Martha shifted in her chair. "Where?"

"Here. This is meant to be cross-training, but I don't see much training going on, this morning notwithstanding."

"It's complicated. UNIT and Torchwood overlap in their missions, but we have very different methodologies. It used to be that Torchwood was an enormous organisation, very similar to UNIT, with its own soldiers and structured tiers, and long-term strategies. Only UNIT was alien-friendly in many cases, and Torchwood took anything alien as a threat, including the Doctor."

"And now?"

"We're approaching the three year anniversary of Canary Wharf." Mum closed her eyes for a moment; she'd been fond of Adeola, and had grieved all over again when Martha had told her the truth of how she'd died. "Only two people are left who were working for Torchwood three years ago. We're in a recession, and certain people are asking why we need multiple groups with the same mission, when one of those groups has a near-total mortality rate."

Mr Weeds stood back from Gold Team with his own grey notebook. Francine followed Martha's eyes as she watched him make a small mark on the paper.

Mum asked, "What would happen if the Torchwood resources were rolled into UNIT? One big organisation with the combined knowledge of two, wouldn't that make us all safer?"

Martha didn't have that answer. She'd wondered inside her own mind if that would be the best option. They could keep the Cardiff base active, but make it an official UNIT outpost with backup and oversight, and using proper procedures instead of "what worked before, unless Jack is remembering wrong."

But the last time Torchwood had been a large, structured group with policies and oversight, that situation had ended with Daleks in the sky and the clank of steel feet. Oversight hadn't helped them and oversight hadn't prevented UNIT from developing a weapon that could rip the Earth apart, nor Martha from nearly carrying out that dread order. Dad liked to joke about the custodians getting into the custard. Torchwood and UNIT had each other's backs, and watched each other suspiciously, and the world had yet to be destroyed.

Mum asked, "Would you be safer?"

"I need to go talk with my team." The cast made walking difficult, but not as difficult as staying would be.

* * *

><p>Their first mistake was in showing their hand too casually. Everyone knew Red Team possessed the artefact.<p>

Their second mistake was complacency: Fletcher had the bog roll and didn't even stow it into a sack or hide it.

Their third was in allowing Lois to distract them as she asked Jones a question.

Johnson seized the prize for Gold Team without any difficulty at all.

* * *

><p>This was probably a stupid idea. She had called Andy, true, and let him know her plan, the part he could know about. A stakeout, Gwen had said, so kindly let the police know not to bother her.<p>

Partly true.

She had her thermos filled with cocoa, her torch, her portable Rift scanner, and a sleeping bag because the temperature was going to drop tonight, and her car would be frigid in the car park beside the Thomas & Rose. She could see her breath as she stamped around outside.

"Are you sure?" Rhys asked her again. "Can't you watch the machine from home and get a good night's rest there?"

She kissed him, cold lips to his cheek. "If something comes through, I'll be able to deal with it better right here." She had a link to Mainframe, in case there was an alert somewhere else as she kept watch.

Something told her she needed to be here tonight.

* * *

><p>Jack made as little noise as possible when he opened the door to their quarters, but the light from the corridor showed Ianto's open eyes. "Sorry," Jack said, closing the door quickly.<p>

"You can turn on the light."

"I'm good in the dark."

Jack removed his clothing and draped it carefully over the desk to deal with in the morning. They'd shoved their two little beds together, though he half-expected to find Ianto had separated them again. There was no help for the sheets and blankets, which didn't cover them both properly laid out. Jack had slept in worse. Ianto probably had, too. He'd never slept in chains standing up, nor had he tried to sleep in a trench, but he'd described his first few flats in London and this was at least clean.

His mouth was soft when Jack's lips found his in the sullen dark. He said nothing, not as they moved together, vying for the best friction between hands and bellies, not as Jack groaned and came between them slickly, nor even as Jack slid down his body, cleaned him with broad laps of tongue, then swallowed him whole, sucking until he convulsed.

Warmth. Pleasure. Jack could give those when he had nothing else to offer.

He settled in next to Ianto. "It's a long story."

"Then keep it to yourself."

Jack blinked in the darkness. "What?"

Ianto rolled over. "Whatever's eating you this time, it's another long story in your past that for whatever reason you haven't bothered to share, or that slipped your mind, or wasn't important before now. You won't tell me when I need to know, but you'll crawl into bed with me and confess in the dark."

"I don't always."

"Often enough. Jack, I want to know. I can keep your secrets. Do me the favour of telling me when I ask you, not when whatever it is has festered inside of you until you need to fuck yourself numb enough to speak."

Jack glared in the darkness, but the effect was spoiled since Ianto couldn't see him. "I do not use your dick as a talking stick, thank you."

Ianto went quiet for a long time. Jack didn't know if he was angry, or maybe asleep. The normal rise and fall of his chest with slumber didn't come.

"Hey," Jack said, wondering what he was supposed to do now, if he should apologise, if he should get up and go bunk with Rupesh and Perry. Scratch that; he didn't think the rest of the team needed to know if he'd been exiled to the proverbial sofa.

"Tell me." Jack didn't miss the sound of defeat in Ianto's tired voice. Did he really do this that often?

He liked crawling in bed next to Ianto, not merely for another warm body but this particular sexy body attached to his sharp corkscrew of a mind. Jack had shared beds (and floors, and desks, and zero-G netting, a couple of swings, twice atop that modern art sculpture Miranda liked, not to mention all the vertical placeholders ... ) with as many partners as he'd had deaths. Rare though were the bed (etcetera) partners who stayed past cleanup, breakfast, or the holiday weekend, and rarer still were those whom Jack mentally recategorised as bed partners with actual sleeping involved as well as the familiar winding together of limbs out of comfort and affection.

He knew Ianto enjoyed sleeping with him, too. Jack had noticed he was less anxious, and less crabby, the days after Jack spent the whole night with him, and so he'd made an effort to stay. A threshold had been crossed at some point, not one Jack regretted at all, where they'd become one another's hot water bottle and teddy bear, and remained lovers, too.

Jack whispered his secrets into the dark like he would into the fur of a soft toy, the hard secrets, the friends and family lost, the lifetimes unlived, knowing Ianto would listen, would hold him, would still love him when Jack finished extracting whatever darkness ate at him. But Ianto wasn't a bottle or a bear, and while he would indeed love Jack regardless, he deserved answers.

"I shouldn't have invited Martha's mother."

"Tell me something not blindingly obvious."

Jack grinned, if a little sadly. "Not for why you think. Though Martha's not going to forgive me any time soon for this."

"No doubt. Jack, what's going on?"

"Trent was on the _Valiant_with us."

"Another prisoner?"

"A guard." Jack remembered the face of the soldier who'd refused to obey and died. He was alive, somewhere. "And a prisoner. We all were, in a way."

Ianto went very, very still. "Did he kill you?"

"Yeah."

"Does he remember?"

"I gave Retcon to almost everyone. His didn't take."

"Oh." Again, the long silence. "Martha didn't recognise him."

"Martha wasn't on the ship long. Francine will know who he is, though. I'd like her spared that."

"If he goes near either of you, I'll kill him myself."

Jack reached his arms out and, mindful of the dip between the beds, pulled Ianto close again. The scents in this room fought with those he always associated with Ianto, the warm coffee, the spiced aftershave, a hint of toothpaste. The sheets and pillows smelled of clinical detergents, and of previous bodies. Jack buried his nose against Ianto's cheek and breathed in.

"Promise me you won't."

"I won't let him hurt you again."

"He wouldn't. I'm never going to be his best friend or biggest fan, and I already told him if I caught him in the same room as any of you, I'd shoot first and ask questions later, but I'm not in danger from him. Don't go looking for trouble."

Jack felt rather than heard the deep sigh. "Are you going to be all right with him here?"

"Yeah."

"Because I meant it, about killing him." Ianto said it in a perfectly flat voice, but it was the same voice he used when he was telling tall tales to Gwen to see if she caught him out, that completely serious tone which meant he wasn't. Probably. Jack squeezed him, and kissed his cheek.

Teddy bear, maybe. Teddy bear with a gun, definitely. Jack couldn't imagine not loving him.

* * *

><p>Lois woke to the sound of the alarms, and for a short second, she thought it was her clock. Then she heard Johnson's feet hit the floor, and she opened her eyes.<p>

"What's going on?"

Clothes thrown on, they spilled into the corridor, Jack appearing only incrementally more awake than everyone else (and wearing the wrong shirt). His arm shot out and grabbed the nearest soldier jogging by. "Explain."

"Sir, we've just got word of a real spacecraft sighted heading this way." The soldier's voice was clipped; she wasn't part of the training but clearly knew who they were and why they were there.

"All right, people. Back on the clock. Kit. Yours. Now." Jack strode down the corridor towards a different destination in the building than Lois had previously seen. The rest of them dashed back into their rooms, Lois grabbing the two monitors, Johnson her gun. They met the other three in the corridor and hurried in the direction of Jack's retreating boots.

Jack was not best pleased by standing aside in the command centre, once they reached it, but he deferred to Colonel Fielding and the UNIT officers rather than immediately taking charge. He did however demand to know what was happening.

"It's an unidentified ship coming in hard. They're on an impact course for our base." Fielding looked at Jack. "Do you know anything about this?"

"Let me see the readouts."

Fielding indicated a station for Jack to sit. Lois kept her position against the wall. Their team looked incredibly out of place amongst the busy soldiers.

Jack's fingers flew over the keyboard, with files and schematics skimming by as he searched. The Captain had an encyclopaedic knowledge of half the alien species they encountered, and he was happy to allow those around him to assume that information came from having slept with them all. However, Jack had been one of the primary minds behind the construction of the Torchwood Mainframe, there wasn't a piece of alien tech he couldn't operate given time and interest, and if he really was from the future as he claimed, modern human technology was as advanced to him as a chariot or a mirror would be to Lois. More than one foe had made the fatal error of seeing Jack's devil-may-care attitude and mistaking his affectations for stupidity. She would not.

He grinned. "It's the Brix."

"Bricks?" asked Johnson. "We're being invaded by building materials?"

Beside her, Ianto relaxed. "No, the Brix are a species we've run into before," he explained quietly as Jack gave the same information to Fielding and the rest. "They're interesting. No homeworld left to speak of, just a wandering species who travel in large family groups through space, roving from planet to planet."

"What are they doing here?" Fielding frowned, obviously considering a large caravan showing up on Earth's doorstep.

Jack went back to the screen. "Not sure. You don't often find lone ships."

"A scouting party?"

"Doubt it. Not their style."

"But you've seen them on Earth before."

"Yeah." Jack sat back, sprawling in his chair as if he owned the place, and wasn't borrowing someone else's terminal. "Sometimes a couple of the juveniles will get it into their heads to steal Mum and Dad's spare shuttle and go joyriding. They wind up here, I give them a lecture, they go home."

Ianto said to Lois, "It's really amusing. He gets all stern."

"Sir," said Hollins, who was on Red Team. "They're coming in for a landing." She gave Fielding the coordinates.

Fielding looked over Jack's shoulder at the screen. "If they're as harmless as you say, Captain, we can continue the training exercise with a live demonstration. Ready the teams for a first contact."

Rupesh let out a disappointed noise. Jack stood and clapped him on the shoulder. "Look at it this way. You're dead. You can go back to bed now."

* * *

><p>Martha won the argument about the cast with simple logic: this was a real situation, and if things went bad, someone could die if she wasn't in top form. She didn't expect anything to go bad. "Cake walk," Jack had explained apologetically to her in an undertone. "Sorry for making you get out of bed." He was sorry enough that he didn't even follow that up with a lewd suggestion about Martha in bed.<p>

The trip to the Brix landing site took about twenty minutes, almost enough time for her to fall back asleep even in the bumpy jeep. She emerged when the jeep arrived at the outer perimeter they'd established around the projected landing site, and she lost her breath at the sudden cold. The temperature had dropped sharply in the night, from brisk to below freezing, with a thick, cold fog blanketing the grounds. Was that a side-effect of the ship's landing? Was it just January?

She shivered inside her coat, and took her bag.

"I'll handle it," Jack said as she neared where he waited with Fielding, her mum, and Mr Weeds. "We'll take a small group, read them the riot act, and send them on their way."

Mr Weeds didn't like the sound of this. "If the Brix come to Earth so often, why can't we give them a stronger warning to stay away next time? This is a waste of resources to send out all these personnel for joyriders."

"What would you suggest?"

"Shoot them. Let them know Earth is a threat, not a holiday location."

"If we shoot them, their parents are going to bring all their uncles and aunts and cousins and grandparents, and they're going to kick our arses. This is easier." Jack finished making adjustments to the scanner in his hand. "Let's go."

Martha joined him. Jack lost his smile. "Martha, can you stay here?"

"'Cake walk,'" she said. "Also, I've met about as many aliens as you have, and that's saying something."

"Humour me?"

"Worried Gold Team is too far in the lead?"

Were they on Jack's turf, had Martha not been stewing all evening over her mother's words, he probably would have won the staring contest. He dropped. "Do me the favour of standing behind me?"

She considered arguing with him. "Fine."

The Brix vessel landed roughly, shaking the ground they stood on. Jack's hand automatically went to her arm to steady her. The ship's bulk disturbed the fog, casting eerie clouds in relief against the bright lights from the UNIT vehicles and the dull lights of the Brix hull.

The advance team fell in around them as Jack led the way, his "Welcome to Earth, are you gorgeous?" smile plastered on his face. Martha moved in his wake. Beside her, Ianto glanced over Perry's shoulder at the readings he took. No radiation levels above normal, no biohazards appeared on her own instruments. Just a typical ...

Jack's body blocked most of the force of the explosion. Unfortunately, that force blew him solidly into Martha.

* * *

><p>Francine didn't scream, and didn't shout, and didn't demand someone do something. Cold fear moved into her, but it made her calm. Losing her head now would do no good.<p>

Beside her, Colonel Fielding shouted orders to his men. These UNIT soldiers were well-trained for this sort of thing, she observed. One alien invasion was like another to them: a surreal thought, but something she'd been around enough to see in action. Speaking of seeing, there was little she could see from here. Between the heavy fog, which was getting worse, and the darkness, Francine could only make out shapes against the fires that were clearly burning nearby.

Martha was in there somewhere, but this was her job, and she was trained for this, and Francine was not going to treat her like a child and assume she couldn't handle it.

She'd try.

* * *

><p>There was too much smoke, too much noise. Ianto's brain sluggishly fought for consciousness. He'd been thrown roughly to the ground, but a quick survey of his limbs accounted for them all, and no major injuries he could establish. He rolled to his feet, scanning around himself to assess the situation. Bodies lay everywhere, though thankfully most of them were moving. Non-deadly, then, except ...<p>

A large metal spike, twisted and bent, ran through Jack's neck. His eyes looked up, sightless. Shouting for a medic was pointless. His brain woke up more. Martha was their medic, and had been with them. Jack's body was laying haphazardly over hers.

Arms sore, he rolled Jack off Martha. As a quick afterthought, and queasy for it, he took hold of the metal in Jack's neck. He pulled it free with a sickening sound and a fresh gush of blood. The miracle that brought Jack back might work faster with less in the way.

"Martha?"

"Ugh."

"Stay down, I'll check the area."

The others slowly made it to their feet, as Ianto heard more UNIT soldiers move in the fog towards their position. Jack wasn't the only injury. Martha crawled to her knees and began assessing the woman beside her, who'd suffered a large gash to her leg from shrapnel.

The aliens were nowhere to be seen in the darkness. That was not reassuring, not with the bulk of their ship looming and blinking in the fog.

"Over here," he said in a low voice that carried. "We've got wounded." Boots hurried to their position.

"Perry?"

Perry crouched over his instrument, his face lit up by the display. "Uh oh."

"Uh oh what?"

"Run. Now."

Ianto didn't stop to ask questions. It hurt to leave Jack's body behind, but he scooped the woman Martha was attending to up in one painful - had he twisted his back? - motion as Perry grabbed Martha's arm. The soldiers who'd heard Perry immediately turned tail. The others boiled around in sharp confusion.

The second explosion threw them all back to the ground.

As Ianto lay there dazed, he heard more footsteps. He swung his head around to see large, billowy forms moving towards their position. Not the Brix. Someone else. There was a sharp smell, like cedar chips. He covered his mouth and nose, but had already breathed in the gas.

The shapes changed, became larger. Beside him, Perry's face contorted into something grotesque. Ianto fell back away from him, horrified, the woman in his arms rolling away, her body shifting into something snakelike and awful. Hallucinogen, his brain provided.

"Martha, the gas, run," he gasped, and could not watch as what looked like a decayed and rotting beast shambled away.

Gunshots peppered out into the dark, and he saw purple trails behind them, fading into green. Ianto closed his eyes. His ears had trouble knowing which way was which, including up and down. Perry had been beside him. He reached out a hand, found a warm arm, and eyes squeezed tightly shut, he dragged the two of them into the darkness, away from the sounds of gunfire.

The sounds were everywhere, echoing and ricocheting. He and Perry stumbled against each other, unable to see. They needed to get back, needed to get away from the smell and the noise, needed to find the team and regroup.

Jack was back there, dead. Inside Ianto's fevered brain, he pictured Jack's corpse rising up, dripping and oozing, dead eyes latched on his. "Come with me," fell out of his mouth, along with green-black bile in great gobs. Ianto screamed.

"This way," came the awful voice, but it was Perry in his ear, his own face and mouth covered by his shirt. His specs were lost somewhere in the fog behind them, and he looked even younger without them. The only light was Perry's torch, carried in a shaking hand.

Ianto's feet moved without his consent, trudging through bracken, until the pair of them fell in a heap somewhere cold and wet. Shivers moved through his body, but his head was clearing. In the distance, he heard another explosion, and then screams.

"You all right?" Perry asked, teeth chattering from the cold. His jacket was torn in half.

"Yeah. You?"

"Yeah. What was that?"

Ianto had trouble thinking. "Hallucinogenic gas, I think. Possibly poisonous. We'll know soon enough, eh?"

Perry's brittle fear was naked on his face.

"We'll be fine," Ianto said, as reassuringly as he could. "We'll circle back 'round and rejoin the others. Stay far away from that stuff."

He got his bearings. They'd stumbled into a small copse, overgrown with weeds, dead and brown now in the winter. It was shelter from the wind, and nothing more. He touched his ear, but static greeted him. "Check your comm." Perry shook his head as he was greeted with the same.

Ianto tried his mobile. Whatever was blocking their signal stopped that as well. "Dammit."

The gunshots grew closer. Ianto took his weapon from its holster. Perry grabbed his, and his face fell. "Mine's loaded with Simunitions."

Ianto had a single clip of real bullets for his own handgun. He wondered how many of those still out there were similarly unprepared.

* * *

><p>Lois had stood back when the initial contact was made, and been spared the first two explosions. She stood further back as the soldiers swarmed past, intent on recovery, rescue, and perhaps repelling an invasion.<p>

The other Torchwood agents were nowhere to be seen in the confusion. For a brief, mad moment, she wondered if they'd all been killed. One fell swoop, no cleanup and no blame attached, she could have Gwen in custody within twenty-four hours. But the Captain would reanimate, and she'd still have to deal with him.

She hoped they weren't dead.

Dr Jones stumbled out of the fog, clutching her mouth and nose. Lois caught a whiff of cedar, pungent in her own nose. Then her paralysis broke and she hurried to Martha's side, quickly joined by Mrs Jones.

"Stay back," said Martha, waving them away. "The aliens released some sort of gas. The others are back there."

Shouts and turmoil surrounded them. Lois's head went foggy as Johnson approached her from nowhere.

"You," said Johnson, her eyes wide and angry. "You did this."

Lois took a step back. "You've been exposed to an alien toxin. Agent Johnson, stand down."

"You want us all gone!" Johnson advanced on her. She had her gun, was fumbling with it. "You're trying to kill us."

"No-one is trying to kill anyone," Lois said. She gestured to Martha's mother to help her daughter move away from the danger. Already, Martha seemed more alert. Perhaps the gas had a short half-life in the body. Johnson would come down any second from her own hallucinations.

Right?

A third explosion went off. There were more screams, and the smell of the gas grew. Martha and her mother had vanished into the fog, bodies of crazy things moved in the darkness around her, and Johnson stalked her like a giant cat.

Lois broke and ran for cover.

* * *

><p>Jack gasped back to life, flailing for contact. Everything was dark, everything was loud, everything stank of rotted woodchips. Panic set in, but he wasn't under the ground, wasn't chained up.<p>

He rolled to his side and scanned the area, thinking back. What had happened before he'd died this time?

Aliens. Brix? Yeah, a Brix ship. Well, probably Brix. Come to think of it, Brix ships were pieced together from other species' ships, so maybe that ID wasn't as clear as he'd considered.

Around him, he heard shouts, but couldn't make any sense of them. His head was fogging. That smell. That was Mantea, oh yes. He'd spent some good times partying on Mantea Prime back in the bad old days. Manteans considered certain oxygen-sensitive chemicals a delicacy, which never worked out well when they brought their snacks along into an oxygen-rich atmosphere. And Manteans flew ships the Brix sometimes bought or stole.

Jack didn't bother covering his face. He lay back and breathed in deeply. His metabolism would burn off the high faster than fighting it would. But the others ...

"Ianto?"

His head felt like it was a million miles wide as he turned to look, but Ianto wasn't close by. He'd been there a minute ago, or however long, and he usually insisted on being with Jack when Jack woke up. Crazy little rituals, that man, thinking to ensure Jack came back just by holding him, not understanding about the vortex or maybe not caring. Well, _caring_, certainly.

Jack smiled goofily. Then he frowned. No Ianto.

No others, either. Had Gwen been there? No. Gwen was back home. He ought to call her and wax poetic about the sex they were never going to have.

He touched his ear and was greeted with static, and at that same time, his head cleared. Buzz gone. Just as well.

Jack sat up. Forms moved around him. Manteans had already walked by, and humans were approaching.

"Hey, guys," said Jack, rising to his feet. "What's the situation?"

The closest UNIT soldier - love those berets, okay, still a little high - raised his rifle. "I've found one of the aliens, sir."

"Good," said Jack, right before a different UNIT guy, a Major who wasn't part of the training exercise, stepped into view.

The Major said, "You know what to do."

Jack had time to open his mouth before the soldier shot him dead.

* * *

><p>Johnson's head swam, but as she chased after the traitor, she began to see things in sharper focus despite the fog. She was running through bracken. She was chasing ...<p>

Johnson stopped. She was chasing Lois, when there were alien Legos to capture. No, Bricks. Or something. She shook her head, then placed a palm to her forehead.

"Sorry," she called out, but Lois's footsteps retreated from her.

There were shots fired from close by. Johnson ducked and went to a crouch, her own gun drawn. "Cease fire! Repeat, cease fire!"

"Stand down!" came the shout, a woman she didn't know, and it was followed by another round of shots.

Footsteps approached. "Cease fire! Friendlies here! We're with Torchwood!" Perhaps that wasn't the wisest thing to admit, but anything would do to keep herself from being shot.

"On your feet," came a voice from close by. Johnson held up her hands and rose slowly.

"Thank you for not shooting. What's the situation?"

"We've found one, ma'am," said the soldier, removing Johnson's gun.

"Bring her."

Johnson's arms were dragged behind her. "What's going on? Where are the aliens?"

"You are, miss," said the soldier, and her wrists were ziptied together expertly.

* * *

><p>"Get down," Ianto said, gesturing to Perry. "There's live fire."<p>

Footsteps crackled through the branches and leaves close by. Ianto readied himself. It could be the aliens, it could be a drugged UNIT soldier.

"Halt!" he said, bringing his gun up.

"Don't shoot!"

"Lois!" said Perry, scrambling to his feet. "Don't shoot her!"

"I'm not." Ianto lowered his gun. "We were about to double back to your position. What's the status?"

Lois let out a hysterical laugh. "You mean, other than Johnson trying to kill me? They're mad out there." There was a stutter of gunfire beyond them. Ianto pushed her roughly behind him into the shelter of the copse and turned around to face her.

"It's an hallucinogen of some sort. We both had a face full. Did you see Martha?"

She nodded. "I think she got out."

"All right." Ianto took a moment to think. "We need to get back to the base. We've only got one gun, and everyone outside is currently insane."

Perry sat back on his heels again. "Also, there are real aliens running around who might be bent on taking over the Earth."

"Typical day, then, for us." That pulled a tight smile from them both. "Right, we'll move together. I'll go in the lead. Lois, you stay between us. Perry, take whatever readings you can whilst we move. We can use ... "

There was another blast of gunfire from outside. Lois jumped, falling closer to Perry. Ianto didn't move at all. The ice running through his right side was enough to hold him stuck in place.

For a moment, everything went very quiet and still, the cold was just cold, could have just been a sudden drip of icy water from a rime-encrusted tree limb. Then the pain started, and suddenly his knees didn't work.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four

* * *

><p>Perry moved fast, grabbing Ianto as he fell to the hard ground. "Ianto? Talk to me."<p>

Ianto moved his lips, but they were cold, everything was cold. "See how bad it is."

Perry and Lois helped him to the ground. Perry unfastened his coat, but paused. Lois had seen him naked, and didn't hesitate. Waistcoat, shirt, everything moved aside under her quick touch. The expressions on both their faces told him enough, even before he saw the blood on Lois's hands.

"We have to stop the bleeding," Perry said, shrugging off the remnants of his own jacket and wadding it into a large ball. The material wouldn't absorb, wouldn't hold, but the gesture was kind.

"I'll walk," Ianto said.

"It's miles. You won't ... " Perry trailed off. He'd served during the war. He'd seen wounds like this before.

The pain was getting worse, radiating through his abdomen, throbbing with his heartbeat. Ianto bit back a shout.

"Go for help," Lois said. "If you can't go back to position, get to the base. If you can commandeer a jeep, bring it here. Take the gun and the torch."

"Keep the gun," Perry countered. "They're mad. Protect yourself."

Ianto noticed dully that he was no longer involved with the conversation. He cleared his throat. "Lois, go with him." They both turned. "Perry's specs are gone and you'll have a better chance together. Come back for me when you can."

Perry looked at Lois and shook his head. "I can see well enough. Stay with him." That was a good sign, Ianto thought as pain shuddered through him. Had they agreed, he would have known there was no hope. Perry thought there was a chance Ianto would still be alive when he got back. Small favours.

The shallow light they had dimmed further, or perhaps that was just him. He watched Lois bend in and press a kiss to Perry's cheek for luck. Ianto closed his eyes.

* * *

><p>Johnson couldn't say for certain if the UNIT soldiers holding her were back in their right minds. The pair kept whispering to each other, whisper whisper whisper, clutching their weapons. Johnson's own weapon had been confiscated. They were in the midst of a bloody invasion, again, and here she was being held by incompetent fools who thought she was an alien or abetting the aliens.<p>

Recalling the time she herself did this to the Torchwood team did not improve her mood.

"I'm not an alien. When the orange lemurs stop talking to you, release me."

"Quiet." The soldier - Boskin? Something like that, she couldn't make out the nametag - gestured at her with his gun.

Johnson grumbled to herself. Then she began working on getting free.

* * *

><p>Lois checked her watch. Perry had been gone for twenty minutes. Had he been ambushed back at the rendezvous point? Did he have to go all the way to the base? She had no way to tell unless the comms returned. She touched her ear to static again. No help there.<p>

From time to time, she heard more gunfire.

She was no doctor. How much blood could a person lose before it was too much? How could she tell if something vital was lacerated without prodding into bits that would bleed more? All she had on hand for pain was paracetamol, and she was afraid to give even that to Ianto, not remembering if it acted as a blood thinner.

His eyes were closed again.

"Hey, wake up." She shook him as gently as possible. "You need to stay conscious. Perry will be here soon, and we'll all go back to the base together. Rupesh and Martha can fuss over you. You'll like that."

His lips twitched into a smile. He opened his eyes, barely.

"The road is a mile from here."

She almost hadn't heard him. "What?"

"The road. It's about a mile away. You'd have to stay away from the others, but it shouldn't take you more than half an hour to reach it. You ought to go."

"It's cold out there and Perry took the only torch. I'll get lost. You're stuck with me, I'm afraid." But now that he'd planted the idea, she found herself considering. With Perry gone, she could leave Ianto and strike out for the base. No-one would blame her. She could claim he'd already died. By the time any potential rescuers found him, he certainly would have, especially if she pulled away what bindings they'd cobbled together over his wound.

And wasn't that the easiest means to her goal? Strike at Torchwood's vulnerable spot, then swoop in for the kill. Mr Gloucester would approve the decision. Johnson wouldn't hesitate. Rupesh was a doctor, and Lois was sure he'd have already started walking.

In the dim light, Ianto was as pale as a corpse.

Lois heard another gunshot nearby. She sat down beside Ianto on his good side, leaning against him for warmth. "Since we're about to die anyway," she said with as much levity as she could muster, "who were the aliens? In the training, I mean. Johnson's been acting suspicious, and that Blickman fellow." She shoved his shoulder until he looked at her.

His breath was shallow. "There aren't any aliens."

"What do you mean? You said there were."

"It's a trust exercise. Gwen came up with it. Could you work with someone, even knowing they might be out to destroy you? Jack thought it was brilliant. I think he likes putting one over on UNIT. Don't tell." His eyes closed again as he spoke.

"But there were aliens on the ship."

"UNIT did those. Everyone's card said human. I made them myself."

From outside, she could hear movement, too large for humans, too small for a vehicle. The pungent smell of cedar burst into her nose. She immediately covered her face. How long until the hallucinogen took effect?

Lois grabbed the gun from where she'd set it. She only had a minute, if that.

She wasn't officially trained for field work, wasn't considered a full operative, was not even qualified per Torchwood standards on a firearm. Gwen gave her lessons whenever possible, but Lois had eavesdropped when she'd confided to Jack and Ianto that Lois was "absolutely hopeless, the poor lamb." Lois had nodded with a satisfied smile and moved away; the hardest physical task about her assignment had been pretending to be bad with a gun, whilst showing slight improvement over time to allay suspicions she was in fact faking the whole thing.

"Wait here," she breathed, and ducked out of the copse.

Her eyes told her the alien was large and billowy, her disorientation told her it was emitting fumes that made her head swim. The creature loomed into view, into the space in front of her, filling her whole world.

Lois fired three times into its centre.

The alien dropped. As she watched, she saw it change forms, first into a lion, then into the bizarrely mangled body of a man she'd killed two years ago. She staggered back, head swinging wildly, not seeing anyone else, not knowing what she'd see if she did spy them.

The gun in her hand shifted like a snake.

Lois ducked her head under the lush purple hanging curtains enveloping the copse, and carefully set the gun down. There was a clown leaning up against one tree, bright red clothes, pale white face with a downturned mouth. She stumbled over next to him, and sat, and waited for the visions to clear.

"Stay awake," she said, hearing her voice gong like a huge old church bell.

* * *

><p>Well before Perry reached the fallback position, he knew he couldn't go near. Hallucinating men and women with weapons plus aliens meant the night was alive with shouts and shots, and it was possible only tonight's thick fog would prevent more people from being killed.<p>

Overhead he heard the helicopters before the searchlights pierced through the night. UNIT had sent reinforcements. Perry hoped they didn't get it into their heads to bomb the whole place.

The next time Jack brought up training, Perry had detailed plans on where he was going to tell him to stuff the idea.

Time to flag someone down.

* * *

><p>Martha's brain had cleared. She didn't have time to wonder what would happen with this exposure, if it would kill her, if it would hurt her baby. She and her mother were far from their previous position, and soldiers scrambled everywhere. Many of them were clearly still seeing visions.<p>

"All right," she said. "Mum, be careful. We're going to collect people. I need to see who's injured."

There'd been a woman with a shrapnel wound on her leg, lost now in the confusion and the icy fog. Martha grabbed the arm of the first person she saw. "Lieutenant, tell me what you're looking at right now."

The woman let out a little scream, and Martha nodded. "Mum, take her, make her sit down until it passes." Very carefully, Martha disarmed the lieutenant and then wondered where she could put the gun. Mum took the woman's wrist and guided her to a flat spot, talking in a quiet, soothing voice.

Martha turned when she heard a groan. Two more soldiers limped together into sight, leaning on each other. "Show me," she said, and one helped shift his friend to her. "He's been shot."

"Ma'am, it's a madhouse."

"I can see that." They half-carried the more injured man over to where Francine waited. "Mum, I need you to gather up more of the crazy people. If they look like they might shoot you, leave them and run."

"Martha?"

"If we can bring them out of the gas and disarm them peacefully, they won't shoot each other or us. Please, Mum."

"I'll go with you," said the other soldier, Boyle. He was injured, but it didn't look bad.

Another explosion came from the area of the ship, a smaller one this time. She saw her mother shudder, then walk off determinedly towards a staggering form in the fog as Boyle followed.

Martha turned to her patient. "Let's get those trousers off. You should be glad Captain Harkness isn't here to say that."

The wound was clean, and she breathed a sigh of relief when she saw it wasn't as bad as she feared. "We'll get you patched up."

Her mother and Boyle brought more people to her position, and the lieutenant began to help them when his head had cleared. Colonel Fielding joined her, brought in by her mother holding his elbow while he raged at giant orcas.

"Martha," Mum said quietly, as the Colonel came to and started issuing orders, "this is dangerous. People are shooting each other, and there are aliens on the loose. You need to go back to the base."

"I'm needed here." She indicated her next patient, who'd been struck in the face with the butt of someone's rifle. In the distance, she could hear what she hoped were reinforcements coming through the fog. They would have been alerted once they knew communications were lost.

"You have been exposed to alien toxins, not to mention that machine earlier. Can you think about your child for once?"

Martha ignored her. She cracked the cold pack and handed it to the man beside her. "Hold this against your face for twenty minutes. Don't hold it longer than that or you'll injure yourself more."

"Thanks."

"Martha?"

"Mum, this is my job. This is what I do. If I don't do my job, someone could die tonight. Yes, I worry. But these people are somebody's children too."

Mum didn't look convinced. She had that same sad face when she'd seen Martha walk away from her with the Doctor.

Martha said, "You're here to watch us work, right? So watch. See what I do."

* * *

><p>A sharp noise startled her awake. Gwen jerked, caught, trapped!<p>

Her vision and head cleared, and she realised she was wrapped up in her sleeping bag. The sharp noise was someone's fist rapping on the car window. Someone wearing a Heddlu uniform. Gwen smiled uneasily and rolled down the window.

"Sorry, hi," she said. "I've got permission to be here."

The constable raised his eyebrows. "This that Torchwood stakeout, then?"

"Yes."

"Thought so. You lot responsible for the broken window?"

Window? Oh yes, the one the Jelly Monster had smashed. "Not exactly. Look, I'm on a case now," she said, coaxing him to go away.

"Terrorists going to take over the church in the wee hours?"

"Could be." She glanced over to her scanner, but the output for the past six hours hadn't changed a jot. "Did you need something?"

"I know you Torchwood people think you can park anywhere, but as a matter of fact, this car park is supposed to be cleared for the sweepers tonight, my cousin works at that shop you broke and had to lose two days of work, and I can't think of anything I'd like to do better right now than issue you a citation."

No sign of anything Rift-related, no calls from back at the Hub, no check-ins from Jack. Rhys would likely appreciate her coming to bed. "All right. Let me get this put away."

He watched her climb out of the sleeping bag and stow it in the boot, and waited until she drove off.

Bloody wild goose chase anyway.

* * *

><p>Cold seeped from the ground into Ianto's body, leached away all warmth and thought. His right side had been a stabbing ache, and now it was a dull, constant throb. His nerves were shutting down, and his system would follow. Were it not for Lois's warmth, created by her coat thrown over them both, and her insistence that he keep talking, he'd likely have gone into shock already. Even with her there, he knew it wouldn't be long.<p>

Selfishly, he was glad. He didn't want to die alone.

Three different times now, he'd mentally begun composing his goodbye to Jack, but hadn't said the words out loud. He couldn't bring himself to make someone else carry that message for him. Tosh had recorded her goodbye. He'd put off doing the same. Now he wished he'd tried.

All his letters began with, "I'm sorry for leaving you. I would have stayed with you until the end of my life." Except, he supposed, he had.

"Come on," Lois said, no longer even faking the cheerful tone. "Connery or Roger Moore."

"Connery." It took a long time to think, to breathe. "Always go with the classic."

Outside their little shelter, there were voices. Not more aliens, then.

"Wait here." As if he could go anywhere.

Lois scooted out from under the coat and picked up the gun. Ianto closed his eyes again, listening.

"Found one!" More footsteps, these running. "Dead. Can't tell, looks like it's been shot."

"Right. We'll load it up and take it back."

They didn't sound mad, at least not more mad than anyone else in their line of work. He heard Lois crackle the branches as she stepped out and immediately said, "Wait! I'm not an alien. I'm with Torchwood."

"Yes, miss, but please put down the gun."

"I'm going to set it at my feet. We couldn't be too careful. Everyone's been exposed to some kind of gas."

"That's right, miss. We're from the base."

A moment passed. Suddenly, Ianto was certain Lois was going to leave without him, leave him here to die in the cold all alone.

"I'm glad you came. My supervisor has been injured and he needs medical attention."

"We can give you a ride back, but miss, the Captain will be up and about any time."

"Not that supervisor."

There was a sudden flurry of feet, and Ianto's eyes came open to see Sergeant Trent rushing inside, face gone pale as snow. "How bad is it?" He immediately reached for Ianto's wound, and Ianto could barely think, or move, and was too tired to speak, but he tried to roll away from the touch.

"Come on, come on. Lauder, give me a hand!"

Despite Ianto's weak protests, another UNIT soldier joined Trent, and together, they lifted him from where he leaned against the cold tree. The movement jerked the bright, hot pain back alive all down his side. Ianto screamed as the fabric tugged away from where it had stuck to him with his own tacky blood.

He couldn't see anything in the darkness, face pressed against someone's jacket, and he was laid on the backseat of whatever vehicle they'd brought, cocooned in blessed warmth. The seat fabric smelled of vinyl, of old leather, and gun oil. One of the soldiers got into the back with him.

_I would have stayed with you._

He passed out as the car lurched into motion.

* * *

><p>The searchlights made the fog less impenetrable. Jack couldn't find a single familiar face, but made his way to where he could see the large stationary lights set up. If his people had escaped, they'd be with UNIT working on a plan. His comm was down, and his mobile was broken or jammed. No way to contact everyone, no way to know who was still alive. He had to trust them to do their jobs.<p>

"Colonel!" he yelled, when Fielding came into view. "What's the status?"

"It's not the Brix."

"Yeah. It's Manteans. I got that. Are they contained?"

"We think they're within the perimeter. We don't have a clear count on their numbers."

"Five."

"You saw them?" asked a major, standing at the Colonel's shoulder. Jack had the impression the guy had been the one to give the order to shoot him.

"No. Manteans always travel in groups of five. They're not threatening."

"Captain, we have multiple wounded, some of whom may not survive, and nearly a dozen people missing." Fielding's face was grave. Jack gave a quick look around, but saw none of his team. None of his _real_team, he thought, war games be damned.

"Have any of my people been injured?"

"No-one's come in," said a new voice. Rupesh stepped out of the fog. "Martha and I are triaging, and sending the wounded back to base."

"So much for being dead," Jack said.

Rupesh nodded at the blood all over Jack's clothes. "You should talk."

A jeep approached, coming to a stop too close to their position. Jack felt a short, sharp sick feeling as Trent got out from one side, and Lois emerged from the other. "Doctor," she said, "we need you right now."

Rupesh jogged over, Jack at his heels. "Are you all right?"

"Back seat," Trent said. There was a soldier in the back, leaning over a still body. The soldier moved out of the way for Rupesh to climb in. Jack heard the sharp hiss of breath before he saw.

His Webley was warm in his hand as he pressed the barrel against Trent's lousy head. "You have two seconds to say goodbye." Jack's vision swam, too many hours of pain, too many reminders of the last time.

His blood pounded in his ears, blocking out nearly all sound. Rupesh's voice did get through: "I need a driver. We have to get him back to the base immediately." Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Lois lean in to say something to Rupesh, who jerked suddenly. Was she there when Ianto had been hurt? Maybe she'd told the doctor something helpful. Please let her have said something helpful. Rupesh got into the back seat with Ianto and shut the door.

The soldier who'd been in the back looked between Jack and Trent, then ducked into the driver's seat. The jeep screeched out, probably jarring the passengers, probably making everything worse. A helicopter would be faster, the trip to the base would take too long, and Jack was rooted here like a tree, unable even to say he needed to go with them, needed to be there.

He could do this.

"One," Jack said. "Two."

He smelled cedar.

"Captain!" Lois shouted, but she was a little voice, and far away.

"Jack!" Perry, out of breath as though he'd been running, stepped beside him. "You're hallucinating. Put your gun down."

"I'm not hallucinating." The smell grew stronger. Around him, personnel hurried into gas masks. Now _there_were memories he didn't need.

"I didn't shoot him," Trent said. "Ask them."

"Sure you didn't."

Perry said, "Sir, there was stray gunfire. Someone shooting at shadows. It could have been any one of us."

"Not you." Jack didn't waver his arm, but he stared at Perry. "It's never you." Jack's lover was shot, but Perry was fine. Jack's son was sent back into the past to die, but Perry got to live a whole new life in the future. It wasn't fair.

"The night's not over yet," Perry said. "Please put the gun down."

Black-purple sparkles formed in front of his eyes, and Jack dropped his arm. Lois was already backing away from some horror only she could see.

The Manteans came. Jack felt a mad giggle start somewhere inside. Oh, the stories he could tell, would tell.

High again. Hm.

Around him, he heard guns cocking, like the clicking of cameras. "They're not hostile," Jack said. "Frankly, as space-faring species go, they're pretty mellow. They probably don't even notice we're here."

He was drawn into a memory from 1969. Lucia and Eirin had been creeped out by a case, some dirtbag from Barry who was infusing sweets with an alien aphrodisiac. Lucia had eaten one, though they captured and dealt with said dirtbag before he could hurt her. After, Jack and Eirin had taken her home, and they'd dug into Eirin's private stash, and the three of them spent the next several hours pleasantly stoned.

Another gun clicked, bringing him back to the present. The present wasn't better. The Master stood in front of him, smiling tightly.

"Get down!" He watched the statues around him fall, pulled to the ground by other statues. Hands like ropes tugged him down, and he fell to his knees as popping corn burst in his ears. His own hands were like giant woollen mittens, covering the sound. Three large clouds crumpled like collapsed pastry puffs. Jack crawled up onto his knees, and back to his feet.

Another form approached him, a horror out of his bad dreams: a covered face; a little boy asking for his mummy; a private spasming as the mustard gas ate his nerves.

"Here." The form held up a mask, and the voice was kind. He couldn't hear, couldn't listen. Hands moved up, pressed the mask over his face, he would suffocate, he'd suffocated to death so much. "Breathe." The hands held his chest and side as Jack gasped into the mask.

Other forms he couldn't make out changed the faces of the monsters around him. The Master's face merged with little Jamie's, became an aurochs, became ...

Jack closed his eyes and breathed deep.

The Manteans were dead. Three of them lay around him like fallen logs. At several paces, he saw the UNIT soldiers and Johnson lower their weapons. Beside him, Martha stood wearing a gas mask. "Feeling better?"

"Yeah. We didn't have to shoot. Manteans are peaceful." Or were. Welcome to Earth, where we shoot first.

"Captain," said Fielding from under his mask, "they had released a biological weapon."

"No." His head had cleared with the rapid dissolution of the toxin from his bloodstream. "It's their respiratory system. Works on humans like LSD. It wasn't their fault. The explosions too." He looked around. "What about the other two? Maybe we can still salvage this." They could explain what had happened. It wasn't the first time the Manteans would have run into a bad reaction.

"Sir?" said Lois, her timid voice muffled by the mask. "A fourth one is dead."

Jack sighed. Four of five Manteans gone, and the last wandering out there in the darkness?

"We need to track down the last one and not shoot it." Breathing better now, Jack took quick inventory. He recognised his own people despite their masks. The UNIT guys could be anyone. "Perry, I need you to figure out a way to track the Manteans."

"On it." Perry went to his knees beside one of the bodies, a monitor in his hands.

"Johnson, gather troops. No more than three, people with gas masks. We want them as backup in case things get bad, but a big group is just going to run into trouble."

Johnson immediately began giving orders to the soldiers beside her, gesturing who should stay and who would come with them.

"Martha ... "

"You don't give me orders currently. I'm coming with you."

Jack nodded. Fighting with her about the matter was dead last on his list of things to do tonight.

"I'm coming, too," Trent said.

"Sir!" Lois's shout sounded strange through her mask. She pointed to a place in the fog, and now Jack could hear the screams.

They broke into a quick trot, not a full-out pelting run as Jack would were it not dark and foggy and easy to get lost or hurt. That lasted as long as it took for the first gunshot to fire. Jack broke into a sprint, and fell face-first into bracken for his trouble. A hand reached out to help him up. Perry. Together they hurried towards the noise, the dark closing in. Where had the damn helicopters gone?

They were lost.

Jack swore loudly as he stopped. Footsteps gathered around him. Perry was still beside him. Martha and Trent materialised out of the darkness together, and after a moment, Lois. "You should have stayed back."

"You didn't say."

Perry looked around. "Where's Johnson?"

Jack followed his gaze, but the fog was thick and the dark barely showed the people around him. "Hopefully keeping her men from shooting anyone. Johnson!"

There was no answer.

"Everybody stick together."

They formed a small bunch, walking more carefully in the direction they'd last heard the shots. Martha walked beside him, huffing. "Are you okay?"

"I need more exercise," she said. "What about you? Are you going to be all right?" Her question gentled at the end, and her voice lowered so that only Jack could hear her. Her hand slipped into his.

"Ask me tomorrow."

"I know all the doctors back at the base. Ianto's in the best hands he could be."

If he'd made it back to the base in time. If there was anything that could be done for him when he arrived. Should the worst happen, he'd slip away and Jack wouldn't even be there to hold him and say goodbye.

A gunshot rang out ahead of them, and then another shout. This one Jack could recognise: Francine.

* * *

><p>Martha forgot her intention not to run. As she dropped Jack's hand, she yelled, "Mum! Where are you?"<p>

Her mother was supposed to be back with the rest at the regroup point. She was supposed to be safe, or safer than this. But Martha hadn't seen her in a while, she realised with horror. Martha had been tending the wounded, and Mum had gone to collect more of those poor idiots wandering off behind the blue tigers.

"Let me go right now." Mum wasn't shouting now. Her voice had gone low and filled with steel.

More UNIT soldiers appeared out of the fog, these not in masks and clearly still hallucinating. One of them held her mother's arm in a tight grip. Hodges, was it? In the dark, their faces were hard to make out.

Another had a gun pointed at her.

Martha stopped up short and held out her hands in as non-threatening a fashion as she could. "Let her go."

Behind her, Jack and the rest came to a stop. The unmasked soldiers were terrified, staring at them in disgust. Martha reminded herself that they were seeing monsters, visions in dark masks.

"Mum, do you recognise me?"

"Of course." Mum's gas mask muffled her voice, but her mind seemed clear.

"Stop it!" yelled the soldier holding her mother's arm. "Stop talking!"

"You're hallucinating," Jack said. "The Manteans emit a kind of gas that reacts badly with humans."

"Quiet, alien," said one of his friends, pointing her own weapon at Jack. Martha thought her name was Fitzgerald. She didn't recognise the third.

Trent said, "The gas is making you see things. Captain Harkness isn't an alien. None of us are. Please let Mrs Jones go."

Mum tilted her head.

Perry leaned closer to Jack. "I have a signal on the last Mantean." The scanner in his hand beeped quietly to itself. "It's coming this way."

Jack said in a calm voice, "We're about to have company. It's an alien but it's not one of the bad guys either. Put your guns down." He held up his hands in a placating manner. One of the soldiers lowered his weapon. The one holding Mum relaxed his grip but held on.

Martha heard the crackle of the branches behind them, and turned, expecting the alien.

Johnson and three UNIT soldiers in masks came in out of the fog, guns raised and pointed at the soldiers holding her mother. The unmasked soldiers raised their guns again. Mum flinched.

Jack raised his arms and walked directly between the two groups, looking back and forth to make eye (or mask) contact with both, forcing himself as the target. After a moment, Trent did the same. Martha saw movement: Lois's hand falling to her side, where she had a gun of her own. Perry ignored all of them, face stuck in his scanner, lips moving to himself as he read whatever it told him.

"Hey!" said Jack, as Martha said quietly, "Don't. That's the last thing we need." Lois nodded and moved her hand.

"Put down your weapons!" shouted one of the men with Johnson.

Jack turned around, keeping everyone's attention on him. "Lower your weapons and stand down, all of you." In a lower voice, he said, "I really don't want anyone else I care about to get shot tonight."

"I told you he was an alien," said Fitzgerald. "We shot him dead, now there's another one."

Trent said, "That doesn't make him an alien. I've shot him dead a dozen times." Mum jerked in Hodges's grip. Johnson lowered her gun, and gestured for the others to do the same.

Martha stepped towards them. "It's all right. You'll feel better once you put your masks on."

Fitzgerald kept her gun trained on Jack. Trent approached her, as Martha went to her mother. "Please," said Trent. "You can stand down now." He reached out and took the gun.

Martha held out her hand to Hodges. He pulled back, tugging her mother with him. Martha waited.

He let go.

Mum stepped away quickly, standing beside Martha.

"Thank you."

Martha heard the Mantean moments before she saw it: massive and vaguely luminous, stalks that could be eyes set in a ring around its head - 360 degree vision, amazing! - and a tripedal gait on short but nimble legs. She hadn't been able to take a good look at the other aliens before, and regretted that terribly. The Manteans were beautiful, like whales or elephants, great intelligent beings.

Four of them were already dead.

"How do we communicate with them?"

Jack asked Perry, "Can you reset that to broadcast ultrasonically?" Perry didn't reply, hands moving over the instrument.

"It doesn't translate," he said, but handed the scanner to Jack.

"I can." Jack placed his wrist strap against the scanner, and spoke towards it. "Hello, guest."

The Mantean stopped, and while it did not turn, Martha had the strong impression most of the eyes were pointed where Jack stood.

"This is a Level Five planet under the Shadow Proclamation." He paused, presumably waiting for the words to translate. "This civilisation has not met your species before."

"Apologies," said a voice from the vicinity of Perry's scanner. "Our vessel took damage."

Jack said, "Our species has an allergy to yours. Our people reacted to you badly." He paused, and said, "The other Manteans have died. Greatest apologies." He bit off the last words, "It was an accident."

Mum squeezed her arm.

* * *

><p>Gwen overslept. When she woke, the clock read half past nine, and the adrenalin pushed her out of bed before her head reset. Yes, she was running late. However, the others weren't at the Hub, she'd been on stakeout half the night, and any alarms would have alerted her here.<p>

As she dressed, she dialled Rhys's mobile. "You didn't reset the alarm," she said, instead of "Hello."

"You were exhausted," he replied. So it'd been intentional. "I checked your little boxes before I left. Nothing's going on, and I won't tell your boss you went in late."

"I love you."

"Love you too."

She rechecked the monitors anyway, but he'd been right. She took the time to fix herself eggs and toast and eat them in front of the television. Just as she popped the last bite into her mouth, she heard the familiar shrill beep of the Rift alert.

Church Street.

With traffic and no SUV, it took her twenty minutes to reach the site. Nothing came over the police channels, so she didn't expect a need to march into an investigation, nor were there any deaths yet reported. She held out hope, and wouldn't call the others until she knew for certain what had happened.

When she arrived on the scene, Church Street was just as quiet as it had been last night.

Gwen parked, then rechecked all her meters. There'd been a Rift spike, a positive one, twenty-two minutes ago exactly at this spot. She readied her gun, then covered it with her coat as she stepped out of her car. The cold snap continued, with a butter yellow sun giving only the faintest warmth. The wind had picked up.

As Gwen checked out the site, she heard a soft sobbing sound. Her footsteps hurried, hand at her side in case of trouble.

A little girl sat shivering at the gate to the stone wall of the churchyard. Gwen smiled pleasantly and approached. "Hello, dear. Are you all right?" No adults were nearby, unless her parents had stepped into a shop, but the girl couldn't have been more than five years old.

The girl shied from her: stranger danger. Gwen said, "It's all right. I'm with the police. My name's Gwen. What's yours?"

The child's voice was a hoarse, raspy cough.

"Lauren."

* * *

><p>They'd returned to the base, sullen and silent. The bodies of the Manteans would be given back to the survivor rather than examined by the UNIT exobiologists. Once repairs were made to its ship, it would leave, a lonely traveller who'd lost everything on what should have been a simple stop. Reports would be written, the regular annals of an alien meeting with the addendum of an altercation. Lois helped Corporal de la Paz distribute the reams of physical paperwork while he made sure the electronic versions went where they were required.<p>

A number of UNIT personnel had been injured, some critically. Lois waited for word about them, about Ianto. Jack spent the time debriefing everyone with Colonel Fielding. She expected him to make excuses to go to the medical facility, but she never saw him leave.

There was an early, quiet breakfast in the mess. She choked down some terrible coffee, only prodded at the soggy bacon.

Johnson joined her after her own debriefing. They were left alone at their table. "You said something to Patanjali at the site before he drove off."

Lois played with her mug. "I gave him some advice."

"What advice?" Johnson had insisted several times in the past few weeks that she needed advance knowledge before the plan went into motion. Lois wondered why, wondered if she herself was being spied on. Today, she was too tired to care.

"I told him that if he let Jones die, I'd have his head mounted." She had not used the word 'head.'

Johnson's frown deepened. "This is our opportunity."

"No killing. Not unless it's absolutely necessary." She took the last, bitter swallow of her coffee, and went to wait for news.

* * *

><p>"I know you."<p>

Francine had waited until Martha was settled and working in the medical area, until Jack was busy with the Colonel and the alien, until the mad rush had calmed to a dull roar. The man who'd come looking for her with Martha and the rest, the one whose voice she'd known behind the mask, she knew his name. She'd waited, and then she'd gone looking for him.

"Yes, ma'am." He stood at ease, making eye contact rather than glancing away in shame.

"And you remember who I am."

"Captain Harkness said his magical pills don't work on everyone."

Francine nodded. Jack had spent hours locked away mixing chemicals together on that first strange day, and he'd offered the concoction to Francine and her family. "You don't have to remember," he'd said. "You can put it away forever, forget the whole year." Francine had declined.

"Ma'am, if it means anything to you, I'm deeply sorry about everything I did that year." Old wounds crawled under his skin, nightmares she was all too familiar with herself.

She let out a hurt little laugh. "I'm sorry, too. I helped him, you know. Saxon. He sent his people to me, told me he could help me protect Martha from her dangerous new friend. I believed him. If I hadn't helped him, there's a chance none of it would have happened."

The year aboard the ship, the pain her children had suffered, and even now the trials Martha put upon herself, how could she not lay the blame at her own feet? Wasn't that why she'd agreed to helping the alien-fighting organisations on this visit? Not just to see Martha, not just to do a favour for Jack, but to make amends of her own?

She closed her eyes.

Every time Martha endangered herself, every action she took that put her own child at risk, Francine saw her own mistakes, heard the whispers in her ears, remembered what she herself had done. She couldn't lock Martha and Tish and Leo into a safe box, couldn't protect them, no matter how she wanted to, no matter what she tried, and when she'd tried her best, the worst had happened.

She felt a hand on her arm, and opened her eyes again. "Ma'am? It wasn't you. It wasn't just you. He fooled us all, and we all played our parts, didn't we?"

Sergeant Trent had his gun. Francine had her Judas whispers. Jack had forced the TARDIS into the future where Saxon got his start. They all carried their burdens, and their blame.

Francine placed her hand over his. "We did."

They could only rewrite so much of the past. The burden lay in choosing to go on. She smiled at him, if bitterly. "Tell me about your daughter."

* * *

><p>Antiseptic stung his noise first. He heard the sounds of monitors softly beeping to themselves. Ianto had spent an unknown amount of time in a half-waking grogginess punctuated with bright light and featureless forms drifting through what sightline he did have. He tried to move his head, found it was bound with tubes.<p>

An icepick of horror shoved through the mist in his mind: the conversion machines, the Cybermen, he was going to be turned ...

When he woke again, the lights weren't as piercing, and he could identify the noises as hospital noises. He turned his head, eyes swimming. He saw a dark form in one corner of the room that solidified into hands, arms, a face. Jack sat, holding a book, intent on his quiet reading and oblivious to Ianto's somewhat muzzy stare, until he faded back into greys and then into nothing.

Ianto woke, and it was dark in the room, all the overhead lights off, just a small lamp and the lights from the machines. Voices came from outside his door, with words he couldn't understand. Boots on a hard floor clacked over to him. He turned his head. Jack watched him carefully. Behind him, figures in white drifted like smoke.

"Hey," said Jack, brushing his knuckles against the back of Ianto's hand. "Welcome back."

"Hey." His voice cracked and broke, dry from the oxygen.

"Do you remember what happened?"

Ianto tried to nod, and failed. "We were all hallucinating." The short sentence wore him out, and he wanted to rest, but he needed to know. "How's everyone?"

"Everyone's fine. Everything's going to be fine." Even in this state, Ianto could read the lie.

"Who's hurt?"

"Our people are okay. Lois shot an alien. Apparently Gwen's training is finally paying off. Gwen says hello, by the way. She found a Rift returnee while we were gone."

"Been busy." What was Jack not saying? Ianto couldn't find the energy to ask.

"Yeah. Gone for three days and she's running the place."

Ianto fell back asleep to the feel of Jack's hand touching his.

When next he woke, he was lucid, and the room was again lit. A nurse came in, and then Rupesh, checking his vitals. "You got very lucky," he said. "The bullet passed right through you. A few millimetres to the left and it would have hit your large intestine. You lost a lot of blood, and need to take things easy for awhile, but you should be up and about soon enough."

"When can I go home?"

"Normally, I'd say not for a couple of days at least." An expression flashed through Rupesh's eyes and was gone. Torchwood's medical facility included the best gunshot treatments in this part of the galaxy, but telling that to UNIT was not part of their cooperative agreement. "As it is, if no complications develop, you and I will be taking a leisurely drive back to Cardiff sometime tomorrow. I can treat you at the Hub, or if you're on the mend, at your flat."

"Just us?"

"The others are headed out this morning."

"Oh." He lay back again, and wondered what day it was.

Jack came to visit once the medical pros had pronounced him okay. "Good morning. How are you feeling?"

"Sore. Bit perforated."

Jack laughed, but with a painful line in his face that Ianto hated to see. "Been there."

"Jack, what's going on?"

"I'm going to take the others back to Cardiff. Rupesh says he'll discharge you tomorrow if the surgeons say it's okay."

"There's something wrong." He couldn't manage stern. He settled for still.

Jack opened his mouth, and then hesitated, walked to the door of Ianto's room, and closed it. No locks. Privacy, though. He came back to the bed, sat on the edge, and held Ianto's hand. "It's not as bad as it could be."

"Who died?"

"All but one of the Manteans. One of the UNIT biologists from your team. Henderson. It was friendly fire. Some others got banged up. We did _not_have a good outing."

The deaths were pressing on his mind, but there was something else. "How's Martha?"

"She's fine. Her mother's fine, though she's really not happy about Martha working for UNIT now that she knows exactly what that means."

"But?"

"There's no 'but' for now. For now, we go our separate ways with UNIT. We can worry about everything else later." The report on the cross-training exercise wasn't going to be flattering. They might yet end up with a fight over sovereignty. Why should the Crown keep funding a fuckup little outfit in Cardiff that couldn't even handle a landing right? "By the way, I offered the Glasgow job to Sergeant Trent. He's thinking it over."

"Are you serious?"

"I can't Retcon him, and I want him where I can see him while not keeping him underfoot. And I owe him."

"All right." He'd been sitting, but was sliding. Ianto tried to scoot up to a more dignified position. Jack helped. Ianto grunted with pain but managed. "Thanks."

"Take it easy while you recover. I'm pulling you off active duty for the next week, longer if Rupesh says so. Light work for the rest of the month, don't argue." Jack played with the edges of Ianto's pillow. "And when you're better, I want you to think about retiring."

Ianto had too many painkillers in his system to be upset. For months, Jack had been pushing Ianto away from this life and the dangers involved. Pushing back had become second nature. "I've already thought about it."

"Oh?" Jack's face drew into a sweet little frown. "You hadn't said."

"I'm handing in my resignation on my thirtieth birthday."

Jack folded his arms. "You are?"

"Yes. Gwen's going to tender hers the same day."

"Well. Good. I'm glad you both have a plan."

"I'm going to buy a farm up north. Gwen's going to buy the next plot over."

"Cosy." His tone had edged into 'annoyed'.

"Her idea. I told her my thought, and she decided to join me. You know I'm terrible at saying 'no' to that sort of thing." He was drifting again, the latest dose of meds working through his bloodstream. "She's going to learn to spin straw into gold."

Jack's eyebrows went up.

"I am going to raise unicorns," Ianto said.

"I don't get it."

"It's our joke. It's our stupid joke."

Gwen wanted in on the silly dream because she needed something to fight for when the real future was too hard to see. She'd never leave Torchwood, not by choice, not when there was one more soul out there to help. But imagining she could go helped her make it through the day. Ianto wanted to pretend he had a say in his own life, wanted to set before himself an impossible reward for achieving what he suspected was a highly unlikely goal. Make believe helped them both cope.

"She and I aren't going to retire, Jack. We're not going to leave. We're with you until the end." He was going to fall asleep again or, much worse, start blubbering.

Jack took his hand again, and kissed him. Ianto pulled away, his breath had to be awful, but Jack smiled around the kiss and deepened it. His eyes stayed open, watching Ianto as their mouths, much more in tune than their brains at times like these, moved together softly, tongues and teeth and Jack's nimble lips.

Jack ended the kiss with another, placed on Ianto's nose precisely the way he hated and Jack loved.

"Make me one promise," Jack said. "Swear on something important."

"I swear," Ianto said, not sure what the promise was, nor what the drugs would make him say. Lisa. He'd swear on Lisa. "What?"

"Promise me that when you go, when you retire to your farm and raise your unicorns ... " He stopped. "Unicorns? Really?"

"I like horses. Mam took us riding when I was little. Unicorns can't be much different." It had made sense at the time.

"When you retire to your farm," Jack squeezed him again, "take me with you?" There was a soft hopefulness about him, a longing that warmed Ianto's heart. Make believe could be shared.

"Yeah. Okay."

Jack smiled.

* * *

><p>The End<p>

* * *

><p>As always, my three favourite words are "I liked this."<p>

To check out the art associated with this story, please go to madbottoms DOT livejournal DOT com.

The next story in this series is "Into Gethsemane."


End file.
